


Shot Through the Head

by Nomette



Series: long road behind [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Detective Noir, Drama, F/M, Humor, M/M, Romance, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:22:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 102,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5438258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nomette/pseuds/Nomette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a shitty night out. A storm’s blown in from off the Glowing Sea and Goodneighbor is glowing with radiation. Bolts of green lightning illuminate the drunks moaning in the gutters.  MacCready can’t get the irradiated rain to stop splashing in his face no matter how he tilts his hat. MacCready's new employer dumps his suit in a back alley and huddles with MacCready in a doorway. Out of his power armor, Leigh is tall and tan, with a nice scoped piece that shoots .45’s. He catches MacCready looking and winks. “Stole this off a corpse, then souped it up myself.” Damn, MacCready thinks, he’s got me dead to rights already. He resolves not to be too friendly with Leigh. </p>
<p>(It doesn't work.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. like a man dying for a drink

Robert MacCready once killed a man over a bottle of beer. He’s not proud, but he’s not ashamed, either. The man had been some drifter, dead drunk and too pissed to notice that MacCready and his fellow gunners were just coming off the high of shooting up a whole damn raider settlement. The blood had still been comfortably warm on their skin when they came into the Third Rail, laughing and clapping each other on the shoulders, ready to drink some shitty beer and hoot at Magnolia while she sang.

The drifter hadn’t liked the swarm of young men coming in, and he hadn’t liked it at all when they stole his spot at the bar and ordered a round. MacCready had spotted his discontent and ignored it, flushed as he was with freshly earned caps and the warm, heady delight of violence. He’d been first to order and first to scoot down the bar, and so it was his beer that the drifter snatched and smashed on the ground. The whole scene had played like MacCready was on jet: the drifter picking up the drink, the crash, the gunners behind MacCready turning, the patrons going for their guns. MacCready’s own gun. The shot.

MacCready’s handgun was a little 10mm, and it had made a little hole going in and a larger one coming out when he shot the drifter in the face. The shot echoed in the little bar, and the music ground to a halt as Magnolia dove behind the radiator. The customers were all getting out their guns. MacCready scanned the bar: six behind and to the left of him, and the bartender at close range with his flamethrower and buzz saw, though it probably wouldn’t come to that.

“Spilled your beer, didn’t he, guv,” Whitechapel Charlie had said into the tense silence. “Deserved what he got. I’ll clean this right up.”  Magnolia had came out from behind the radiator and went back to singing, and the bar had returned to the usual mixture of suspicion and beer.

MacCready hadn’t been bothered by the drink at the time, but in later days he had taken it as an omen. The Third Rail was one of those places: a pit stop for people on their way to some final decision, one way or another.

MacCready’s decision saunters into the backroom of the Third Rail wearing expensive power armor and tacky sunglasses, and watches as MacCready tells Winlock and Barnes to get lost. Time stutters when the man asks MacCready his name and it’s like he’s watching the drifter reach for his beer all over again. He makes his usual sales pitch: 250 caps, upfront, non-negotiable.

“And hey, what’s your name, or should I just call you T-60?”

“I’m Leigh, and everything’s negotiable. 200 caps, and I’ll let you ride in one of my spares.”

“You have more than one of those?” MacCready asks, and Leigh grins like MacCready’s already said yes. Maybe he has.

“I’ve got a whole garage,” Leigh says, and MacCready takes the caps.

It’s a shitty night out. A storm’s blown in from off the Glowing Sea and Goodneighbor is glowing with radiation. Bolts of green lightning illuminate the drunks moaning in the gutters.  MacCready can’t get the irradiated rain to stop splashing in his face no matter how he tilts his hat. Leigh dumps his suit in a backalley and huddles with MacCready in a doorway.

“Someone’s going to steal that,” MacCready points out. He’d steal it, if he had any idea how to pilot one of those things.

“Not unless they have a fusion core, they’re not.” Fusion cores run at about 140, slightly more than half the value of MacCready’s life. People don’t keep that kind of shit stashed for a rainy day, not in Goodneighbor. Out of his power armor, Leigh is tall and tan, with a nice scoped piece that shoots .45’s. He catches MacCready looking and winks. “Stole this off a corpse, then souped it up myself.” Damn, MacCready thinks, he’s got me dead to rights already. He resolves not to be too friendly with Leigh.

“So, we just going to squat in this doorway all night, or what?”

“Keep it calm and look over my shoulder, inconspicuous-like. Is the city watch looking?”

“No. They’re about thirty seconds between rotations, though, so I’d wait for the next pass.”

“You’re a doll,” Leigh says. “I’m going to get out a screwdriver. Let me know when we’re clear.” Doll, MacCready mouths to himself. Leigh, he thinks sourly, is entirely too cheerful for someone whose rads are rising by the second. MacCready gives him the all clear, and Leigh kneels and jimmies the door open with a bobby pin and screwdriver like it’s nothing.

“Nice,” MacCready says. “What’s the plan?”

“The plan is, we go in and kill everyone, then we take as much stuff as we can carry. It’s going to be mostly triggermen, so machine guns. You’re on cover fire, I’m on point.” As plans go, MacCready’s heard worse.

They go in at a crouch, Leigh in front, MacCready behind with his rifle. Leigh introduces them by capping one of the triggermen in the head. MacCready takes the next one with a headshot as he comes around the corner, and a third in the shoulder. Adrenaline punches into his system, making everything crisp and fast and clear. The third triggerman survive. Leigh motions urgently for MacCready to come forward and MacCready sprints across the hall and crams himself into the alcove.  

“I’ll get the one on the stairs,” Leigh whispers. “There’s three more left upstairs.”

“How do you know?”

“Pip-boy,” Leigh says, and sticks his head out. Nothing. He switches his pistol out for a nasty looking shotgun, then sprints up the stairs. Two loud shots, then a round of gunfire. A flash of lightning through the windows illuminates the trail of blood leaking from the landing. Damn stairs. MacCready takes them two at a time, peeks around and shoots another triggerman in the head. There’s two corpses on the floor, and two living triggermen hiding from the shotgun behind a crate.

“Some gangsters you guys are,” he says, and takes the head off the idiot who pops his head up to look. Leigh rounds the makeshift barricade pops off a round from his shotgun into the last triggerman. Click, boom.

“Very professional,” MacCready says.

“Same to you,” says Leigh with a nod. He picks up one of the beers the Triggermen left on the windowsill and takes a swig. “Tastes like radiation,” he says, and finishes the bottle, then hands another to MacCready.

“I’m not big on the green ghoulification lemon flavor,” MacCready says, and tucks away the bottle to sell later.

“Suit yourself- oh, a desk fan!” Sooner or later, every employer has some kind of flaw, and this turns out to be Leigh’s: he has the worst taste for old world junk of anyone MacCready’s ever met.

They clean out two more triggermen nests, then hole up in the third to wait out the storm. Leigh strips the place down practically to component atoms and dumps everything into two piles. MacCready approves of this down to the bottom of his broke little heart, even if he doesn’t understand why Leigh’s love for desk fans.

He tells the man so after his third beer. There’s only so much you can do in a hideout after you’ve divided up the loot, so they’re drinking their way through the ex-triggermen’s cooler. Nothing tastes better than stolen beer.

“Well,” Leigh drawls, “the fans have got screws, and the screws can go into sheet metal, and the sheet metal goes around the edge of turrets.”

“You can make turrets out of desk fans? I’ll have to be a lot more drunk before I believe that.”

“Twenty caps says I can,” says Leigh.

“Fifteen,” says MacCready. First rule of the perpetually broke: never pay more than you have to.

“Don’t trust yourself, do you?”

“You seem like a maniac,” MacCready says, and takes a sip of his beer. “So I’m not more than fifteen caps sure that you don’t turn desk fans into turrets.”

“This from a man who kills people for money.”

“I’d be more of a maniac if I killed them for free.”

“Fair,” says Leigh with a laugh, and they clink their glasses. A toast: to only killing people when you’ve got a damn good reason.  

The trips to Daisy and Diamond City to sell all their loot are murder on MacCready’s back, but the caps feel good. 5% of 500 caps is a decent haul, and afterwards Leigh takes him to his digs.

“Home base, huh?” says MacCready as they tromp in through the door. “Moving a bit fast, aren’t we, boss?” Leigh chokes and then starts to laugh.

“How’d you know that? People around here aren’t usually up on their baseball lingo.”

“There were some books and stuff where I grew up,” MacCready says shortly. He doesn’t like to talk about Little Lamplight. More attention means more chances that some asshole will head down with the intention of stealing from some stupid kids.

“Trying to be mysterious, are we?” There’s someone else in the house. MacCready whirls and brings up his pistol, trying to keep his eyes on both Leigh and scan the darkness of the backroom at the same time.

“Relax, it’s just Nick,” Leigh says as a tall man emerges from the shadows, his eyes two glowing yellow crescents in his face. Strips of skin are missing from his face and when he lowers his cigarette, his fingers are nothing but long strips of steel. MacCready lowers his gun and holsters it.

“Do you always sulk around in unlit rooms? Or do those eyes of yours have night vision?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, kid?” Nick’s got a voice like old leather and whiskey, the kind of voice you hear in the old movies. A gentleman’s voice. Funny thing to hear on a synth, but just right for old Nick. He’s never talked to the detective before, but he knows him by reputation. Only synth detective in the Commonwealth.

“Surprise me again and we’ll see how much older you get, old man.”

“Not much of a mercenary, if you let yourself be surprised by a bucket of bolts like me,” Nick says, but he offers MacCready his hand. They shake.

“Are we all friends now?” Leigh asks blithely. “What brings you to my digs, Nick?”

“Gotta sensitive problem,” Nick tell him with an eye on MacCready.

“Go check out the roof,” Leigh tells MacCready. “You’ll like the sightlines. Great sniper’s post. My robot butler might be around here, or, hmm, a lady who likes punching things for caps. Actually, I think the two of you would get on fine. Look, just assume anyone who's not shooting at you is supposed to be here.”

“Got it,” says MacCready, and heads up the stairs and out onto the roof. It’s late in the day, and the sun is setting behind the stadium wall, turning the sky pink and gold and messing up MacCready’s line of sight. There’s a slim young woman in a newsboy cap seated on one of the chairs. She calls out to him when she hears his footsteps on the roof.

“Is that you, Blue?”

“Probably not,” MacCready tells her.

“Gotcha. Another one of his friends, then? Have a seat. I was just working on the next issue of Publick Occurrences.” MacCready sits down next to her and steals a beer out of the cooler.

“You run that thing? We love reading that over in Goodneighbor. Lifts our spirits.”

“Goodneighbor, huh. You some kind of mercenary?”

“Best sniper you can hire this side of the Commonwealth.” The woman laughs.

“Good for you. I’m Piper. If you follow Publick Occurences, you already know what I spend most of my time doing. Sometimes I take a day off and go shoot things with Blue.” She holds out her hand and the two of them shake. She’s got the right gloves for someone who goes shooting frequently. It makes MacCready like her more.

“So,” she says, leaning in conspiratorially. “What are you up to with Blue? Whatever he’s doing, it always makes a good story.”

“Just taking out some gangsters. You want a story, you can ask him, I’m sure he can make up something.” Piper snickers.

“That’s Blue, alright.” MacCready hasn’t got anything to say to that, so he sits in silence for a bit and nurses his beer. It is a nice view. The smell of noodles rises from the shop below, and the lights of the city gleam in the encroaching darkness of night. MacCready has the sense of being perfectly, comfortably invisible, just the way he likes it. The roof is a beautiful sniper’s post- he could take out two guards and the weapon shop owner with one pass, and hit the second wave of guards as they came around the corner. Not that he would. But it’s a nice feeling to be ensconced, more dangerous than the world around him. Next to him, Piper scribbles on a piece of paper, occasionally pausing to stop and glare fiercely at the city before returning to her work.

“Hey,” MacCready says to her. “Why do you call him Blue?”

“Hmm? Oh, the man was fresh out of the vault when he first came in. You should have seen him come into town in the blue suit of his.” MacCready processes this.

“You know, that’s good to know. I was beginning to think that man was an institute synth. He’s kind of weird.”

“Why’d you stay with him, if you thought he was a synth?”

“Caps.” Piper snorts.

“Typical Goodneighbor.”

“You have something against dishonest work, Miss Rabble-rouser?” MacCready retorts. “Just because you have unlimited free time for muckraking doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t need caps.”

“I’ll have you know that I make plenty of money with my muckraking,” Piper informs him. “Everyone loves a good story. The commonwealth’s stuffed with people who know how to shoot, but hardly anyone around here can write a story. It’s the power of the press, baby.”

“Big words for some who ran a story about how securitrons can be modified to be sex robots.”

“It was a slow newsweek,” Piper tells him, totally unashamed.

“Jeez,” says MacCready, and then starts to laugh. “Fu-Fine. You’re alright, you know that?”

“Glad I can get your approval,” Piper tells him dryly. “You seem like less of a maniac than most of Blue's other friends, but that's only because I'm comparing you with Cait, Hancock, and a super mutant. He’s got a name but I don’t really want to ask.”

“A super mutant?”

“Come on, Blue hasn't told you that story? I thought he busted it out to impress all the new hires. So, we were on our way to Good neighbor when we heard this weird distress call…” MacCready doesn't believe half the bullshit that comes out of Piper's mouth, but he can't bring himself to stop listening. The Piper and "Blue" in the story have just made it to the top of Trinity Tower when the actual Leigh emerges from his house onto the roof.

“... and then he opened the door and let the super mutant out," Piper continues. Leigh holds up one finger and interrupts. 

“First off, we still had a stimpack left when I opened the door. Second, there was a bobblehead in there. I wasn’t just going to leave it.”

“You could have shot the guy through the bars,” MacCready points out.

“It might have chipped the Bobblehead,” says Leigh.

“Good to know you value your knick-knack collection more than human life, Blue.”

“Seems reasonable,” says MacCready, eliciting a grin from Leigh. 

“A man’s got to have his priorities,” Leigh says with a smirk. Piper sticks her tongue out at him.

“Well, I’ll just leave you cold-hearted mercenaries to count your caps or whatever you do in your spare time. I’ve got to finish this article by tomorrow.”

“See you around, Pip!” Leigh calls after her. A muffled yell echoes up the stairs.

“Don’t call me that!”

“She’s great,” Leigh says fondly.

“Sure,” says MacCready. He wonders if they’re sleeping together. Probably not. Leigh gives off a vibe like if someone was his girl, everyone would damn well know it, and Piper’s not the sort to be anyone’s girl. “You seem to know everyone around here.”

“I make it a hobby,” Leigh tells him. “It’s going well so far. I’d introduce you to Cait, but then we’d be up drinking all night and I want to go meet some mutants tomorrow. Sadly, I don’t think these will be friendly.”

“Aw, too bad, I love drinking all night.”

“I’ll introduce you when we get back, then. The couch is yours. Be ready by dawn tomorrow.”

“Got it, boss.”

They go to the library.

“Are you seriously returning books now?”

“I didn’t see that mutant!”

“How did you not see it? It’s huge!”

They go to the comic book store.

“Now that I think about, you look like the skinny comics nerd type, MacCready.”

“This from the man with an alphabetically organized comic shelf in his house.”

They go to Swan’s pond, then run away from Swan’s pond as fast as possible. It takes five dead raiders and a few stimpacks, but they finally make it to the top of the fire escape, safe from the falling rocks. Swan roars and tosses a few more building-shaking missiles, but he can’t fit on the fire escape. Some unlucky raider draws his attention and he stumbles off, roaring.

“Fuck this freedom trail,” says MacCready. “Freedom ain’t worth it if I have to fight a super mutant to get it.” Leigh goes to the edge of the building and peers down.

“Raiders are dead,” he reports. “I think Swan’s going back to his pond, but I’m not sure.”

“Let me check, boss. No offense, but you can’t see for shit.” He pulls out his scope and peers down the street. Swan is adjusting his hat. “I think we’d better stay up here for a while. Hey, at least this way no one’s going to try and steal your armor.” Leigh makes a face. The top of the raider hideout is surprisingly cozy- there’s a fire pit and an armor workbench. MacCready’s stayed in worse digs, although usually the corpses were in a different room.

“Do you think we can dump these corpses over the side of the building?”

“Don’t see why not.” Leigh replies. They clean house. Leigh shuffles around with a broom for a bit and digs some meat out of the fridge.

“Time to cook some molerat, I guess,” he says without much enthusiasm.

“I’ll cook it,” MacCready says, and pulls out his little pack of spices. It’s one of the most valuable things he owns- having something to cover the taste of slightly rotten meat is worth it’s weight in gold. Leigh looks genuinely impressed.

“I headshot a man at two blocks, and this is what impresses you?”

“I can kill people, but I can’t cook for shit,” Leigh says.

“It ain’t hard,” MacCready tells him. “Throw some salt on it and then turn it till the juice is clear. Molerat ala mode.”

“Do you even know what that means?”

“No idea.” Leigh snorts. They sit in silence while MacCready digs some beer out of the cooler and seasons the molerat with it, then puts it in a pot to cook over the fire. There’s so much jet scattered around the room that MacCready briefly considers adding some to the stew just to see what it does, but, eh, better not. The top of a skyscraper is no place to try new things.

“Hey, MacCready,” Leigh says.

“Yeah, boss?”

“What was up with those thugs in the third rail?”

“Used to work with them. Bunch of animals. Trying to scare me out of the commonwealth. Why do you wanna know, boss?”

“Just wondering,” Leigh says.

“They’re just assholes with better guns than they deserve.”

“How is that different from us?”

“We’re assholes with decent guns,” MacCready tells him. Leigh sits back and considers this for a bit. After four days of running and gunning, it’s a little strange to see him out of his power armor again. Out in the field, Leigh is a giant fucking wall for MacCready to hide behind, a voice rattling from the depths of a tin can that says “watch your left.” Out of his armor, he’s just a man, slightly taller than MacCready, bruised and sweaty from their final sprint up the stairs. His eyes are brown and his hair is black, his cheekbones smooth and high.

“Hey, boss, are you chinese?” Leigh jerks at the question like he’s been shot.

“What? No. I hate them commie fuckers. Well, I used to. I guess I don’t have to anymore. China’s probably ruined now. We had a lot of nukes in the US before the war.” They lapse back into silence. MacCready takes watch on the fire escape and tries to remember what he knows about the chinese. Not much. Stuff he read in old magazines. A guy that Princess and the other girls used to swoon over, a guy who didn’t look too different from Leigh. Different eye color.

“Hey, MacCready, do you know where any gunner nests are?”

“Why?” MacCready asks slowly.

“Well, I have aspirations. I’d kind of like to be an asshole with a nice gun.” MacCready’s glad he has his back turned. It’s dangerous letting people know how much you want something.

“I know a place.”


	2. pre-stabbing one liners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Wait, I thought of something,” Leigh says, with the small smile he wears when he’s getting ready to con a merchant out of half their caps. Here it comes, thinks MacCready. He folds his arms and scowls as Leigh steps closer to him.  
> “Yeah?”  
> “Can I give you something?”  
> “Sure?” MacCready says, confused. That’s a pre-stabbing one liner if he’s ever heard one, but Leigh’s not holding a knife. Leigh tracks his gaze and laughs, then rests one arm on MacCready’s shoulder. MacCready tilts his head to look at Leigh’s other hand, so the kiss catches him as he’s looking up.

MacCready is impatient to get down from the roof and to the gunners, so naturally it takes three hours before Swan fixes his hat and leaves, and another day to get back to Diamond City, and the day after that when MacCready wakes up Leigh’s gone.

He wakes slowly to the gradually growing awareness that he’s alone in the house. There's something about the quality of the silence in the house, the way the dust moves in idle circles, undisturbed for hours. MacCready scans the house for hostiles anyway, out of years of habit, but there’s nothing, only the unfortunate staring heads of Leigh's wall decorations and a note on the kitchen table. He’s not surprised, somehow- Leigh is like a radio station that everyone around him can’t help but tune into. One can feel it when he’s around. He picks up the note and reads it.

“Gone with Preston to rescue kidnapped settler.” - Leigh

“Okay,” MacCready says, and steals some snack cakes out of Leigh’s fridge, then heads out to look for Piper’s place. It’s not hard to find- it’s kind of her to label her house with a giant sign. The inside of Publick Occurences is dusty, filled with the smell of paper and ink. Piper herself is ensconced in the basement, writing intently.

“Leigh left me a note and left. Who the heck is Preston?” he asks. Piper is absorbed in her writing.

“Minuteman. Great hat. Keeps Blue in small jobs. He probably won’t be back for another two weeks.”

“Ugh,” says MacCready.

“You two were out for like a week, weren’t you? You can take some downtime, spend some caps.”

“Ugh.”

“Go sit in the living room if you’re just going to ugh, I have a paper to finish.” MacCready sits on a rickety chair and waits a few minutes to see if Piper’s going to finish anytime soon. It doesn’t seem like it. Right as he’s getting ready to leave, a mostly naked redhead emerges from a pile of blankets like a mirelurk queen coming out of the ocean and rushes into the bathroom. MacCready’s eyes catch a few details in the blur: scars splashed across thick forearms, the acid smell of chems, a tank top stained with blood.

He takes out his pistol and lays it across his lap and waits. After a few minutes a woman emerges from the bathroom, hair dripping water. Her stained tank top and shorts do nothing to hide the brawler’s scars across her forearms and legs, and MacCready makes a mental note: only engage at long range.

“You must be Cait.”

“How’d ya know?” she asks, only there’s something strange about the way she shapes her words. It takes a few seconds for MacCready to register  what she’s said.

“I was told there was someone around here who liked to drink, and you look like the type.”

“Oi, that’s me. Not today though, I had enough of a kip last night at the bar and today I’ve got a date. Some idiot insulted Pip, and I’m going ta turn his face to a paste.”

“Uh, have fun,” says MacCready.

“Sure, same to ya.” She heads into Piper’s kitchen, grabs a bag of mutfruit and heads out the door. MacCready waits until she’s gone, then heads into the kitchen and starts rifling through Piper’s fridge. There’s the sound of someone swearing downstairs, and then Piper comes tearing up the stairs.

“Have you seen Cait? Are you- are you eating my mutfruit?”

“No, and she went out. I think she was on her way to punch somebody.”

“No,” says Piper, and grabs him by the wrist. “Come on!”

“Why?”

“Because Cait is going to punch the mayor, and because you owe me for that mutfruit!” MacCready sort of wants to see someone punch the mayor, so he jogs after Piper as she sprints out of the house and up an endless set of stairs. He loses sight of her for a bit and jogs lazily up a rampart, munching on the mutfruit. Piper and Cait are at the foot of an elevator, arguing.

“Ya can’t just let people disrespect you like that, Pip!”

“I can’t get kicked out of Diamond City, either! My printing press is here!”

“Don’t let him kick you out, then. I bet Blue could take these guards.”

“That’s not the kind of place Diamond City is!”

“Well,” Cait says, folding her arms, “I told the major I wouldn’t let this stand, and I won’t. So there.”

“Can’t you just splash him with some water or something?” Piper asks. “Come on, MacCready, back me up on this!”

“Well, I think she should punch the mayor,” MacCready says. Piper groans. “But, uh, I also think that you’ll probably get killed if you try to fight all those guards alone.”

“You looking to get paid to help?” Cait asks. MacCready considers it, but he doesn’t really want to be in a gunfight with all of Diamond City. Too many kids running about, liable to get caught in the crossfire. His gaze skims the other side of the stadium and he remembers something he and his friends did to Princess when they were just kids.

“Would you be okay if the mayor just got humiliated?”

“What do ya have in mind?”

“Well,” MacCready says, “I just got this junkjet. So, if we could just find some dye and a way to get up the side of the wall…I’m a pretty good shot. And the mayor probably has some kind of window, or a balcony where he takes a smoke break.”

“I know a way up the wall,” Piper says slowly. Cait punches the side of MacCready’s arm, hard. He thinks it’s supposed to be friendly.

“Well, what are we waitin for?”

 

MacCready gets the mayor square in the face with Piper watching down a scope and Cait on his binoculars. After a short, passionate debate, they loaded the junkjet with a teddy bear soaked in yellow paint and bloody runoff from the meat stand. The mayor staggers backwards and Cait hoots and pumps her fist in the air.

“That was beautiful,” Piper says.

“Thank you, thank you, I’m here all week.” Diamond City is stretched out below them, the colorful roofs of the painted shacks bright against the green of the wall. The smell of sewage and smoke and noodles rises in the warm, stinking air. The three of them are huddled on a small platform across from the mayor’s office that Piper discovered “when she was going an investigative piece,” which MacCready takes to mean that she was spying on the mayor.

“This calls for drinks,” Cait decides, and grabs Piper by the collar and kisses her fiercely. Piper’s hand flail for a bit, then settle on Cait’s shoulders. Cait dips her like one of those women in pre-war dances and Piper comes up for air flushed and grinning.

“Cait!” She bumps her forehead shyly against the other woman’s, then seems to remember that MacCready is standing there.

“Feel free to keep going,” MacCready says.  

“Uh, let’s get some drinks. And get down from here before security shows up.” They cram into the elevator Piper discovered and take it to the second floor. From here, it’s only a few flights of stairs to Diamond City and freedom.

“Hold,” Cait hisses as the elevator doors pop open. There’s the sound of footsteps in the distance.

“The mayor’s goons,” mutters Piper. MacCready takes out his gun and hesitates. Is he willing to kill someone just so he can stay in Diamond City? Leigh can probably come get him in Goodneighbor if he has to. If this were Goodneighbor, it’d be a damn easy choice, since Hancock doesn’t believe in leaving punishment to chance, but here in Diamond City they like to exile people and pretend that’s not functionally the same thing as death for most. MacCready picks up his gun and sights down the barrel. The steps get closer. Piper makes a small noise in the back of her throat and lifts up the barrel of his rifle, then pulls him back into the elevator. She punches a button on the elevator and and the doors slide shut, but the elevator doesn’t rise.

The steps get closer, then pass in front of the door and run up the stairs.

“Come on,” hisses Piper, and opens the door. They sneak to the stairs and then break into an open run. Three flights of stairs, and they come out near the back of Piper’s house. They sneak in through the back window of the house, then come out the front door in full view of all the neighbors.

“I sure love sleeping in,” Cait says, and squeezes Piper’s ass. Piper yelps and scurries forward.

“Was I also sleeping in?” MacCready asks, amused.

“Not that you’re not a good shot, but I’m not really interested in your gun.” Cait tells him. “Prefer to use my hands. More personal, ya know.” Piper snickers.

They go and get noodles. When Diamond City Security finally comes to question them, they’re seated at the bar, MacCready having conned Piper into paying for him, and Cait is using chopsticks to explain proper eye gouging technique. The two of them have come to an understanding: in the other part of my life, I would have killed you for caps, and I still might, but here and now we are having fun and I respect you.

“You should run an issue on this,” MacCready says to Piper, laughing. He’s already had two drinks in an attempt to make a cover story and it’s possible that he is a little drunk.

“Sir, I’m going to need to talk to you,” the security guard says.

“We’re toasting right now,” Cait tells him, and lifts her glass.

“To Leigh, and all his crazy friends.” MacCready grins at her.

“To Leigh,” he says, and downs his cocktail.

 

When Leigh comes back to his house a week later, MacCready, Cait and Piper are arm-wrestling. Specifically, MacCready and Piper are both against Cait, who is holding them both back with one arm. The bobblehead stand has beer bottles on it. The floor has liquor bottles on it, and the house stinks of the acid smell of jet. Leigh has blood splashed across his shoulders and front, a bruise blossoming across the side of his face, and the blank expression of a man who hasn’t slept in more than a day.

“Hey, boss,” MaCready says, and Cait slams him and Piper into the table.

“I see you’ve been having a much better time than I have.”

“We shot the mayor,” Cait says gleefully. MacCready recovers his arm and rubs it.

“I shot the mayor… not with a bullet, though. He's still alive.”

“That’s… good.”

“We’ll just get out of your house,” Piper says hastily. “And, uh, clear up these beer bottles.” She elbows MacCready in the side and MacCready shuffles to his feet and starts stacking the bottles in a crate. Leigh watches them with the bemused expression of someone who’s not sure whether they’re hallucinating or not.

“Sorry, Blue, we’ll be out of here in a second, and then you can get some sleep.” Piper runs up the stairs and starts taking bottles off the bed.

“Hmm,” Leigh says, like he’s just remembered something, and heads up the stairs. He turns off the light and rolls into the bed. MacCready leaves out the front door to Piper’s place, where Piper resumes work on Publick Occurrences with a slightly guilty look. MacCready throws together a mirelurk omelette for Leigh with Piper’s ingredients- Piper is truly a soft touch- and sneaks some of it into his mouth once she goes downstairs. Leigh himself doesn’t emerge until several hours later, and then he eats the omelette with a blank expression and goes back to sleep, but the next day he’s up and knocking on their door. Piper is writing and Cait is out, so it’s MacCready that answers the door.

“We’re going to a water purifying plant.” Leigh is probably angry, but his expression is completely blank, a station that’s not sending out a signal. If he was a synth, MacCready thinks, he wouldn’t act like a synth.

“Are you out of drinks?” MacCready asks, and Leigh shakes his head.

“You’re carrying the replacements,” he informs MacCready. Leigh’s mood improves once they’re out on the road, and he cheers up when MacCready shoots a super mutant from behind cover a hundred yards away.

“I told you I was a good shot, boss.” MacCready doesn’t like super mutants because it takes a spray of shots to kill them, even when it’s straight to the head. The damn things don’t know when to die.

“Everyone says they’re a good shot,” Leigh replies.

“Yeah, but they’re not me,” MacCready says, lining up another target in his scope. The super mutant groans and clutches his head, and MacCready nails him with a second shot, right in the neck.

“Damn. Five years in the army and some skinny wastelander beats me at the range. Where’d you learn to shoot?” MacCready lowers his rifle and grins at Leigh.

“Learned in the Capital Wasteland. I was 16 and I figured I might as well put as much space as possible between me and the enemy.”

“Someone must have taught you, though.”

“Nah, it’s all me.” Leigh whistles through his teeth.

“No parents, nothing?”

“Getting jealous, boss? I don’t have no parents. Didn’t need them. Worked it out fine on my own. Watch this.” MacCready lines up a charging mutant suicider in his sights and squeezes off a trio of shots at the bomb. The side of the hill explodes with a crunch that shakes the earth.

“Didn’t need a scope to see that,” Leigh says. “Christ. Felt that explosion clean through my armor. You’re really something, MacCready.” MacCready takes off his hat and tips it, and Leigh laughs. The two of them head to the right, and the rest of the afternoon is spent in killing super mutants and making chitchat. At last, the final super mutant goes down, and they head into the water plant which, predictably, is full of mirelurks.

That night they have crab cakes for dinner. Leigh’s habit of carrying around junk turns out to extend to food, and the super mutants have an elementary cooking stove rigged up. MacCready cooks while Leigh drags the dead bodies to the edge of the boardwalk and pushes them into the water.

“So,” he says, “how exactly did you end up shooting the mayor in the face with my junkjet?”

“Well,” MacCready says dryly, “Cait was originally planning to punch him in the face, but I thought this might be a little less controversial…” He explains how Cait and Piper’s argument went down, his idea, the ascent, the shot, the guards.

“I take back what I said earlier. You and Cait get along too well.”

“Not as well as Cait and Piper get along,” MacCready says, flipping over one of the crabcakes. Leigh snorts.

“That one surprised me, though it shouldn’t have. Piper wanted to interview her about “The Raider Lifestyle.” They had some kind of screaming argument, then they didn’t talk for a while, and then Cait was looking smug and Piper started having bruises on her neck.”

“It suits them,” MacCready says absently. The crabcakes are brown on the outside. “It’s good to have a partner. Piper’s too naive. Cait will look after her.”

“You know, I think most people would have phrased that the other way around.”

“Cait’s not naive.”

“No, but I’d say Piper takes care of her just as much as the other way around.” MacCready shrugs.

“The first round of crabcakes is done.” They eat until they can’t eat anymore. It’s the fullest MacCready’s been in a while, so full he can barely get to sleep, even after the first watch. Got to take food while you have it. When he does sleep, it’s like a stone, and when he wakes up it’s nearly noon and Leigh’s bedroll is empty.  

Leigh turns out to be sitting at the end of a pier, flipping through an old pre-war magazine. When he sees MacCready, he closes the magazine and tucks it next to him. The cover is in some language MacCready doesn’t understand, all squiggles and lines.

“Morning, MacCready. I thought you were going to sleep all day.”

“You’ve gotta enjoy yourself while you can. Can you read that stuff?”

“I was just looking through the pictures,” Leigh says, off-handed, and that line might work on someone who hadn’t seen the way his eyes moved over the page, but not on MacCready. “Were you still interested in getting those gunners?” he asks, and part of MacCready thinks: distraction tactic, but the larger part thinks YES.

“You’re the best, boss.”

 

They drop their loot in Diamond City, then hike to the overpass. It’s early evening when they reach the camp, but MacCready makes them wait until night, when the fires in the center of the encampment will make the gunners night blind and vulnerable.

“Stay here,” MacCready whispers to Leigh, who is a looming shadow in his power armor. He figures that since he’s the one who wants the gunners dead, he should be the one to plan. “I’m going to try and pick them off one by one. If anyone sees me, I’m going to book it back here and then you can take them out. Try to keep it quiet. We don’t want to alert the people up top.”

Leigh’s bought him a better scope, and MacCready makes the best of it. The first guard goes down with a triangle of shots: two to the body, one to the head. Quiet. MacCready holds his position, and sure enough, the next idiot comes running and stands in the open while she examines the body. There’s a moment when she turns and looks blindly towards him and MacCready blows her face out of the back of her skull. The final, more intelligent gunner holds their position, but MacCready gets them by circling around to the gap between the boards. Gunners always build their camps on the same templates. MacCready remembers standing guard in the night and watching, always conscious of that little hole in the back of the defenses. The upper ranks never let him change it, sure as they were of their own invincibility. Idiots. MacCready’s looking forward to being done with them.

He heads back to Leigh and gives the all-clear.

“I almost believe you could do this by yourself,” Leigh murmurs.

“Snipers aren’t too useful when you’re up on an overpass with your back to the drop and you’re being advanced on by men with shotguns,” MacCready replies.

“Well, I do so love an opportunity to be useful,” Leigh says. They take the elevator in silence, MacCready with his sniper, Leigh with his minigun and grenades. There’s no turret at the top of the elevator.

“Sloppy,” comments MacCready. “Alright. Here’s the plan. Mines as far down as we can safely place them. I’ll start with some headshots, see who I can get. After that, they run for the mines. After that, mini-gun and mop up. The gunner captain at the end has power armor, but he sleeps like the dead.”

“I have to say, I’m impressed, but also a little worried that you’re going to knife me in my sleep.”

“You left me in your house with a fatman and 30 stimpacks in your safe. If I wanted to take it, I’d be halfway to the glowing sea by now.”

“You broke into my safe?”

“I might have been drunk, and Cait bet me fifteen caps.” MacCready can feel his face glowing hot. He’s not sure what’s more embarrassing: that he broke into the safe, or that he really didn’t take anything.

“Are you blushing?” Leigh asks, peering at him.

“I’ll just go put those mines out,” MacCready mutters, and heads into the darkness. The turret is only a MK1: MacCready eyeballs its range and drops the mines where stray bullets won’t set them off. No use in giving the game away early. When he heads back, Leigh’s already moved to a small alcove. In the darkness, his suit of armor is nothing more than another shadow on the overpass. MacCready waves to him and heads further down the overpass, then goes down on one knee and lines up his scope.

Barnes is by the fire, chewing on a piece of molerat.

“Good riddance,” says MacCready, and takes his shot.

 

After the mines have gone off and MacCready’s made a new personal record of headshots in one night and Leigh’s lit up the night with his minigun, MacCready drags Winlock and Barnes corpses from the pile, rifles through their pockets, and dumps them off the edge of the overpass with a triumphant yell.

“Rest in peace, you stupid fuckers!”

“Wow, a real curse word,” Leigh comments. “I’m sensing a profound grudge.”

“Whoops,” says MacCready. The urge to say something sappy and grateful rises in his chest, but he pushes it away. “So, boss…”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s divide up the loot!” They make a pile of guns and gear- MacCready can tell Leigh more or less off the top of his head how much everything is worth, and it’s a lot- and finish off the night with drinks and food behind the barricade. Leigh’s got a slight sunburn along his forearms from the heat of his minigun, so MacCready helps him apply a stimpack to the area.

Leigh’s eyes are dark in the flickering light of the fire, and his expression is intent as he watches MacCready smooth gel on his arms. The gaze is strong enough to make the fine hairs rise on the back of MacCready’s neck, but Leigh doesn’t seem angry about anything. Of course, he never does.

“I’m getting a vibe like you’re planning to murder me,” MacCready comments as he smears the last of the gel over the palms of Leigh’s hands. “If you wanted that fourth laser rifle so much, you could have just said so.” Leigh shakes his head and it’s like a door has come down.

“I was just thinking,” he says, and smiles. “You remind me of someone I used to know. Of course, she was a lot more vindictive than you are.”

“She?” Leigh just smiles and shakes his head. MacCready is in too good of a mood to bother with mysteries. He sleeps in the sergeant's shack with a pile of stimpacks under his pillow. When he wakes up in the morning the desire to say something soppy has come back in full force. He manages to hold it off until after breakfast, but after they finish their mutfruit and snack cakes Leigh smiles and offers to carry some of MacCready’s stuff in his power armor and MacCready’s lost.

“I, I shouldn’t be racking up more favors from you.” He pauses and stops, then makes himself look at Leigh. “You were the one that hired me, but you ended up doing me a favor. I owe you for it.”

“It’s fine,” says Leigh.

“No. I like everything to remain nice and even and you… you’re up one on me. Let me give you back the caps you gave me in Goodneighbor.” It’s a small gesture, maybe even a stupid one. Leigh has caps to hell and back. They don’t mean the same thing to him that they do to MacCready. But MacCready takes out his purse and hands off the caps to Leigh, hoping that he’ll understand.

“Thanks,” Leigh says, and puts the caps in his pocket. “You can keep calling me boss, though. I like that.” MacCready splutters and Leigh snickers and claps a hand on his shoulder. They head down the ramp, their packs loaded to the brim with gear. At the end of the bridge, a stone’s throw from the elevator, Leigh stops and gets out of his power armor.

“What’s up?”

“I thought of something,” Leigh says, with the small smile he wears when he’s getting ready to con a merchant out of half their caps. Here it comes, thinks MacCready. He folds his arms and scowls as Leigh steps closer to him.

“Yeah?”

“Can I give you something?”

“Sure?” MacCready says, confused. That’s a pre-stabbing one liner if he’s ever heard one, but Leigh’s not holding a knife. Leigh tracks his gaze and laughs, then rests one arm on MacCready’s shoulder. MacCready tilts his head to look at Leigh’s other hand, so the kiss catches him as he’s looking up.

The kiss is soft, tentative, barely a press of lips against lips. MacCready feels suddenly and totally exposed, caught in an ambush with nowhere to run. Leigh brushes his hand along MacCready’s cheek, then pulls away.

“Do you want another one?” he asks. He’s only standing a step away, close, too close. His shoulders and face fill MacCready’s entire field of vision. Smooth, golden skin, a small, mysterious smile, dark eyes. These things fill MacCready’s field of vision, pin him to the spot.  

“I-I,” he says, and realizes that he’s blushing redder than a stop sign. Leigh leans in slowly, delicately, the movement telegraphed. Move if you’re going to move. But MacCready can’t move. He stands, paralyzed, as Leigh presses his lips to MacCready’s. MacCready closes his eyes, leans in, allows Leigh to pull him closer. Heat pools between their bodies, a hot stab of desire rising in MacCready’s gut. Leigh’s fingers are hot along the nape of his neck, his lips close and soft and demanding. When they separate, Leigh’s eyes are half open, his face shuttered and secretive, lips barely parted, a hot, hungry look. MacCready feels like a safe Leigh’s trying to crack open.

“I can’t,” he says, and steps backwards.

“Ah,” Leigh says, and it’s like a security door slamming shut.

“It’s not,” MacCready says, and stops to take a breath and think. “I was surprised,” he says and runs his thumb over the handle of his gun. It’s not a great nervous tick to have. “I hadn’t thought about you that way. Not that you’re not attractive, but I have- had- other commitments. I really, I do appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I just can’t, not right now.”

“So, later?” Leigh says lightly.

“Uh, maybe,” MacCready says.

“Okay.” Leigh shrugs and gets back into his power armor.

“What? Jesus f-freaking gosh damn it. You can’t just do that.”

“Sorry,” Leigh says, completely unrepentant.  He continues down the ramp. “Honestly, that’ll teach me to try and give you something. Next time, I’m charging you.” MacCCready pauses, then jogs down the overpass after Leigh.

“Charging me? For kisses? You said those were free!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No beta, so all the mistakes are mine. I would have loved to see more multiple companion scenes in the actual game, and the dialog between MacCready and Cait when they switch makes me think they would get on exactly like someone else's house on fire. 
> 
> Come talk to me at [Nomette](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/nomette) on tumblr.


	3. scout and advance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trust, for MacCready, is a question of distance. He trusts anyone at the far end of a scope. That’s safe. Within small arms range, he trusts certain people. Piper, the diamond city guards, they won’t shoot first. The most dangerous distance is this one here, only a few feet away. This close, you have to consider what people want. Leigh wants caps, but not like MacCready wants caps, and he wants guns, but not like MacCready wants guns. Whatever makes him tick, he keeps it close, and the only thing that MacCready’s ever seen him really intent on is a kiss. Whatever he wants, it’s not going to make him raid a cave full of kids just for the easy pickings. Leigh’s not safe, not with his armor or his guns, but MacCready is starting to think the most dangerous thing about him is his smile. 
> 
> TW: raiders feature heavily in this one, so you know, implied torture and the usual raider stuff. It can be avoided via the section breaks.

Loaded with guns and gear, they stagger north to a settlement Leigh calls the Starlight Drive-In. The night animals are retreating to their holes, the day ones just beginning to rise. Nothing attacks the two of them, and for a while it feels as though the two of them are the only people in the world, the thump of their boots on the cracked asphalt the only sound.

They arrive at dawn. MacCready hears the settlement before he sees it: the hum of turrets, the distant grumble of the generator. The place is bristling with defenses. Nice weapons for some nowhere settlement. Leigh, of course, walks right up to the gate and yells his name, and settlers scramble down to open the doors for him.

“I’m ready for bed,” MacCready mutters.

“Okay, but in the morning I’m taking those caps from you,” Leigh says cheerfully. “Every single one of these turrets started life as a desk fan.” There’s no enough beds, so they curl together on one of the larger beds. MacCready falls asleep almost instantly, his mind curling over the exits and entrances to the shack. One behind, one in front. Leigh’s with him, he’ll be safe.

He wakes the next day to hot sun slanting in through the walls of the shack. Leigh’s still asleep, so MacCready gets up and walks around the settlement. It’s nice enough. Mutfruit, fancy water purifier, corn, brahmin, storekeeper who doesn’t give him enough caps for the gear he’s selling.

Leigh wakes up about an hour later than he does and heads straight to the workshop.

“Time to eat shit, MacCready,” he says cheerfully.

It turns out you can build a turret using a desk fan.

“You used other stuff, though, so I’m keeping my caps. I thought you were going to build a turret just out of desk fans.”

“I used the desk fan, just like I said. Pony up, MacCready.”

“No chance, boss. But you can have this fusion core I found.” The fusion core’s worth more than fifteen caps- way more- but MacCready would rather give it to Leigh than sell it. Besides, between the haul from the library run and this, he’s feeling pretty generous, and those caps are all due to Leigh hiring him.

“I- thanks,” says Leigh. Probably no one’s ever given him a fusion core before. He’s looking at it like he might be a little bit in love. It’s sort of attractive. Now that Leigh’s put himself on the table as a potential- MacCready’s not sure what the word is- partner, MacCready finds himself evaluating the prospect. It’s not a bad one. Leigh seems like a good guy, but MacCready’s going to want to know him a lot better before he agrees to anything.

A settler comes up to ask Leigh about some trivial thing, and MacCready leaves them to it. The man has the patience of a saint. He heads to the tiny stand calling itself the local bar and chats up the bartender for lack of anything better to do.

“Traveling with Leigh?” the settler asks. “Watch him for us. He set up this settlement- water, food, everything.”

“Did you at least pay him?” MacCready asks, horrified. He can just imagine it- Leigh carting around junk, sewing beds, planting seeds, making a water pump for no reason other than that he’s too nice to charge people for it.  

“He gets a percentage of the stuff we sell at the store.”

“Seriously? You should all be paying him rent. Actually, you are. Starting now. Caps in your inventory. Hand them over.” Amazingly, this works. MacCready rounds up about a hundred caps and brings them to Leigh.

“You have got to stop being so nice to people,” he says, and hands them over.

“Where did you get these?”

“Your freeloader settlers.” Leigh looks at the caps, bewildered, then starts to laugh.

“Jesus, MacCready, I, man, hoooo.” Leigh shakes his head and keeps laughing. “Okay. I must be the highest paid nuclear engineer in the capital wasteland. Come with me.”

MacCready follows Leigh up to the roof of the gas station, where Leigh takes him aside, his hands on MacCready’s shoulders, close enough that MacCready wonders if it’s the set-up for another kiss.

“Okay, so, how much water do you think this settlement needs?”

“I guess, probably about 50 liters a day.”

“Okay, so how much water do you think those two water purifiers make?”

“More than that?” MacCready guesses. Leigh grins, his face lighting up with mischief.

“And how much do you think merchants pay for this endless stock of purified water?”

“You’ve just got these settlers here protecting your water supply,” MacCready realizes. “You’re a genius.”

“Jesus, MacCready, never change. Also, don’t tell the settlers that. I enjoy the pure, unadulterated adulation every time I come in.”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“I love the loving looks on their face when I come into town to siphon off their hard work. Don’t ruin it for me.”  He claps MacCready on the shoulders and heads down the stairs. Fuck, MacCready thinks. He hasn’t developed a crush on anyone so quickly since Lucy.

 

They go to Greygarden.  

“Dang, did these robots just give you control of this settlement?”

“Seems like it.”

“I’m going to eat so much mutfruit.”

They go to Vault 81, and catch a cat.

“Wait, are we seriously going out just for some damn cat?”

“Yes, seriously.”

They have to fight a mirelurk for it, but they bring the cat back.  

“Come on, you have to admit that reward was worth it.”

“Why the heck does some vault kid have a fusion core?”

They find a sentry bot, then try to unfind the sentry bot at top speed. Thankfully, it seems to be guarding something in specific, so it doesn’t follow them as they sprint out of missile range.

“Why do I always find more trouble with you?” MacCready mutters.

“Let’s find some shelter,” Leigh suggests. They find an old shack, dispatch the radscorpion inside, and hole up for the night. There’s a shelf filled with skulls. MacCcready stares at them, wondering who put arranged them so neatly. The radscorpion?

“Radscorpions don’t do interior decor, right?” Leigh laughs and sticks a skull in his pack.

“What are you going to do with those?”

“Make them into cutting fluid. You know, for turrets.” Leigh gives him a big obnoxious wink and MacCready groans and rests his forehead against the wall.

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I used to be an engineer, before the war.”

“Before the war?”

“Oh, right. I also used to be alive, before the war.”

“Holy sh-wow. Before the war. What was that even like?”

“Cleaner, and with marginally less pork and beans. I was a soldier, so there was about the same amount of shooting things.” MacCready digests this information. It’s not the same as coming out of Little Lamplight, not at all, but he can empathize with the shock of leaving your home and never being able to go back.

“Huh. Sucks. Even when home wasn’t that great, you always kind of want to go back.”

“Where did you grow up, if not with your parents?” It’s a loaded question.

Trust, for MacCready, is a question of distance. He trusts anyone at the far end of a scope. That’s safe. Within small arms range, he trusts certain people. Piper, the diamond city guards, they won’t shoot first. The most dangerous distance is this one here, only a few feet away. This close, you have to consider what people want. Leigh wants caps, but not like MacCready wants caps, and he wants guns, but not like MacCready wants guns. Whatever makes him tick, he keeps it close, and the only thing that MacCready’s ever seen him really intent on is a kiss. Whatever he wants, it’s not going to make him raid a cave full of kids just for the easy pickings. Leigh’s not safe, not with his armor or his guns, but MacCready is starting to think the most dangerous thing about him is his smile.

“I grew up in the Capital Wasteland, small place by the name of Little Lamplight. It was just kids there, all the orphans in one place. We had a rule- you had to leave when you were sixteen. I was mayor for a while, if you can believe it. I was a punk back then, thought I was tougher than all the mungos out here in the wasteland.”

“Mayor MacCready,” Leigh says with a crooked smile. “Has a nice ring to it. Is there a first name to go with that?”

“Robert Joseph, but RJ is fine. Or you can just stick to the last name. I’m honestly more used to it.” Leigh contemplates this.

“So would you say you r j Macgreedy person?” MacCready tries to punch Leigh in the shoulder, but Leigh grabs his arm and flips him onto his back.  

“Learn that from Cait, did you?” MacCready asks. Leigh is close, his hand gripping MacCready’s wrist, his leg between MacCready’s legs.

“Is it later yet?” he asks, and MacCready flushes.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he says, and feels his face flush pink. “I’m not, I don’t know how serious you are…”

“We don’t have to be serious,” Leigh says. “We could just kiss.” He leans forward, his lips brushing the side of MacCready’s neck, and bites the side of MacCready’s neck, then kisses him softly over the bitemark.

“We could do that,” MacCready says, flushed. “But, uh, you’ll have to let me up first.” Leigh hauls him up like he’s practiced, and smirks.

“What are you smirking about?’

“It’s a goddamn mystery,” Leigh says.

“Watch your language,” MaCready says, and kisses Leigh. It’s- he’s been thinking about it since the bridge, thinking about it as they walked into Greygarden, thinking about it as he watched Leigh pull a pin out of a grenade with his teeth and smile. Leigh’s mouth, Leigh’s lips brushing against his own, Leigh’s hand scouting up his inner thigh and advancing on his belt. MacCready slides one hand along Leigh’s shoulder and up the side of his neck. Leigh’s skin is hot under his fingers, his pulse thumping.

“No need to be shy,” Leigh says and MacCready leans in and brushes his lips against Leigh’s. It’s barely a touch.

“I’m just surprised,” he murmurs. “I’m not usually the target for fast talking rich guys.”

“Is that what I am, a fast-talking rich guy?” He leans his head into MacCready’s hand slightly, like a cat looking to get scratched, and MacCready feels a dizzy rush of affection.

“Well,” MacCready says, embarrassed, “uh, yeah.”

“Cool. You can be my sexy enforcer, like Fahrenheit with Hancock.”

“I’m, uh.” MacCcready tries to picture himself as a sexy enforcer, and only gets a confused image of himself in Magnolia’s dress. “I don’t know if I’m ready to commit to the sexy enforcer lifestyle, boss,” he says, and giggles because the image is so ridiculous.

“You’re really cute,” Leigh tells him. “Has no one ever told you that before? He leans in and bites MacCready’s lower lip, and MacCready feels a stab of arousal in his gut.

“Boss, you’re like, suspiciously good at this.”

“What are you suspecting me of?” Being a smooth talker who just wants to get me into bed, thinks MacCready, and the thought makes him flush. It’s not like it would be bad to get into bed with Leigh- to feel all that attention on him- but Leigh wouldn’t stay, and MacCready can’t be anyone’s enforcer, not yet, not until he’s saved enough caps to hire someone to come with him to save Duncan.

“I,” he says, and he’s about to mention Duncan when one of the mines Leigh scattered around the perimeter goes off.

“Fuck!” MacCready yells, and goes for his gun. Something rolls across the floor. MacCready shoves Leigh to one side without thinking, and the grenade goes off.  MacCready is in the air for a confused second, and then he slams into the ground behind the blasted wreck of some pre-war car. His sense come back in fits and starts: first, a stabbing pain in his leg, then the ringing in his ears and the sound of gunfire, and ast of all the ability to move his fingers. He straightens slowly. His left pant leg is soaked through with blood and resists all of his attempts to move.

Leigh, MacCready thinks. He draws his gun with shaking fingers and peers out from behind the car. Five raiders are firing on Leigh, who has drawn his shotgun and charged one of them. MacCready points at one of them, his hand dipping and rising as black spots rise in his vision, squeezes off a burst of shots. A few of the shots go wild, but two of them catch the raider in the back.

Center of mass, MacCready thinks grimly, and then he catches sight of the power armor coming up the hill. There’s a thin, airy whistle, the sound of a missile flying through the air, and then Leigh’s armor goes up in flames. A pneumatic hiss, and Leigh slides out the back of the armor, rolls a grenade across the ground and sprints for cover.

MacCready calls to him, but the sound is swallowed in the hiss of a second missile. MacCready’s heart thumps as Leigh drives behind a tree just clear of the impact radius of the missile and then he’s gone. Fuck, MacCready thinks. He sums up his options: leg hurt, probably broken, multiple raiders, backup probably thinks he’s dead. He scoots under the car and tries to hold still. There’s an odd silence, nothing but the ringing in his ears, and then someone peeks over the top of the car, an odd gun in their hand. Syringer, MacCready thinks, and then there’s a sharp pain in the side of his neck.

“You think this one will make it?” The faces over the top of the car are blurry. MacCready tries to reach for his gun, but his fingers are paralyzed, trembling. More raiders appear, their faces blurry and trembling, heads moving and multiplying. MacCready blinks, trying to clear his vision, and darkness swallows the whole world.

 

Metal bars. Low voices. Hands opening up his coat, taking the bullets out of his hat, skimming along his belt, unclipping his gun. Laughter. Rough fingers opening up his jaw, forcing in something that makes his tongue go numb.

When MacCready comes to, his coat and hat are gone, and his mouth tastes like a hangover and rotten meat, all at once. He scrapes his tongue along his teeth, trying to get the taste out, but his mouth is dry as a desert. The smell of psycho drifts up to him and he fidgets. The slight movement makes his leg scream with pain, the kind that goes straight to your spine. Don’t you fucking scream, he thinks, and bites his hand. You’ve got to stay alive, for Duncan.

There’s a scrape down below and MacCready squeezes his eyes shut, tries to look like he’s asleep. His cage rattles, and MacCready thinks fuck, this is it, and then the footsteps recede. Cautiously, he opens one eye and scans the area. Roof, walls, meat stink of rotted flesh, chem smell, cages, pit. He’s in some kind of raider base, the biggest he’s ever seen. They’ve put him in a cage and hoisted him into the air: he could pick the lock, but there’s nowhere to go. Down below him, there’s some kind of controversy: the raiders are hooting and firing bullets into the air.  

Ten, maybe fifteen feet down, a raider comes through a doorway leading an enormous super mutant on a tiny leash. Another group of raiders comes across the bridge, their leader holding a shotgun. Shotgun or no, it’s great choke point for Leashes if he wants to pick a fight, but he just lifts his hands in the air.

“Who do you think you’re supposed to be?”

“I ditched Jared’s gang. I heard you guys had a good game going, so I brought you something. Always wanted to see a super mutant fight a deathclaw.” It’s Leigh. Leigh, wearing leather asschaps, a hockey mask and a fucking belt with skull on it. MacCready stifles a hysterical giggle.

“How’d you get the mutant tame?” Shotgun asks, more careful than the others.

“I found some pre-war shit, some kind of helmet.” The super mutant _is_ wearing a helmet: it’s a piece of power armor with some stuff glued to it. Leigh probably put it together in five minutes at an armor station.

“Hell yeah!” says one of the raiders, and Shotgun puts his gun down and waves Leigh over. They all clap him on the back, congratulate him, start asking him about someone named Jared.

“Last I heard, Jared got run-out by some vaulty and crackhead from Diamond City. Fucking puss. Glad I bailed when I did.” The raiders laugh at this and take Leigh away, the super mutant lumbering after them. The sound of their voices fades, and MacCready’s left in his dangling prison. Whatever Leigh’s going to try, MacCready hopes he tries it soon. His leg smells like rot, even worse than the general stink of the raider filth, and he keeps seeing spots. Death is coming, one way or another.

Hours pass. MacCready’s leg stops hurting and his stomach picks up the slack. He’s not sure when he last had water, but it’s been at least a day from the way his throat feels.  Maybe, a treacherous voice in his head whispers, Leigh’s been a raider all along, and this was his endgame. That’s stupid, MacCready thinks. Hell of a lot of work to put in to catch one mercenary, when he could have shot me and taken my stuff anytime he wanted. Finally there’s a rattling sound, and the cage starts to lower, piece by piece, until it clunks down onto the ground.

Thump. There’s another cage: a small, frightened wastelander whose tears tracks are the only clean spot on her face. She meets MacCready’s eyes for a frightened second then jerks her head away like she can’t bear to look at him.

“P-please,” she begs. “Take him instead of me. I’ll be good. I can cook.” The raiders giggle. One of them is wearing MacCready’s clothes.

“That coat makes you look fat,” MacCready says, because he can never keep his stupid mouth shut.

“Shut your damn mouth,” says the coat thief, and goes for her gun.

“Pff,” says Leigh, and jabs his thumb down on MacCready’s leg, right where the break starts. It’s like someone has jammed a ripper into his leg. Pain shoots up his leg and paralyzes him, sets his ears to ringing. His vision blurs. His heart thumps wildly in his chest.

Slowly, the sound of the raiders laughing comes into focus, the sound stuttering from their ruined lungs.  One of them has his arm around Leigh and Leigh is laughing too, grinning like he’s just told a hilarious joke. MacCready leans his head on the bars and tries not to throw up.

“Fuck you,” he says, as soon as he’s got the breath for it. “You piece of shit, I’ve had colds worse than you.” Leigh snickers.

“I like this one. More spirit. We should give him a pipe pistol and stick him into the cage after the mutant and the claw fight.” Yes, McCready thinks. Just give me a fucking pistol.

“I want him for the ceiling,” says one of the raiders, sullen. “He made fun of me. I’m going to make his ribcage into a chair.”

“Come on. Take the other one. Girl like that won’t make a good fight. We can fish out his corpse later with a hook.” They drag the other girl from the cage screaming. As they’re trooping out, one of the raiders comes over to MacCready's cage and leers at him.

“You’ll get yours soon, baby.”

 

The girl doesn’t stop screaming. MacCready is selfish enough to be glad they didn’t take him. After a while, he starts to wish she would just die. It’s like a prayer: let the screams stop, let the screams stop, let the screams stop.

The screams don’t stop, but Leigh comes back leading the super mutant from earlier. The sledgehammer in the mutant’s hand probably weighs as much as MacCready. There’s three or four raiders following the two of them.

“So all you have to do is say the trigger phrase, and he attacks?” Leigh nods. He’s stolen or borrowed or charmed away the head raider's shotgun, and it’s racked and ready in his hands.

“Strong, take it away,” he says, and the super mutant’s first swing knocks two raiders on their asses and a third into the abyss. Leigh fires point blank at one of the raiders on the ground and her head turns to so much pulp.

“Don’t ruin my hat,” he yells, and one of the raiders turns to look at him. Strong grabs the man and smashes against MacCready’s cage with a bone breaking crunch. Ugh, thinks MacCready, and gingerly touches the top of his head. There’s something wet and sticky in his hair. Another blast from the shotgun, and a raider staggers past MacCready and falls into the abyss.

“Save my coat!” yells MacCready. Another blast, and then the thump of heavy contact. The cage shakes and then lifts up as Strong seizes MacCready’s cage and runs, each heavy footsteps making the cage swing wildly. A wide swing, and the edge of the cage catches a raider in the head hard enough to make the whole cage rattle. MacCready’s stomach rebels. He gags, but there’s nothing in his stomach to throw up.   

“Don’t use that as a weapon, Strong,” Leigh yells. “Put it down and break open the lock.” A crack, and the door comes off the hinges. The super mutant looks down at him and sneers.

“Puny human not worth rescue.”

“Hey, Strong, that guy over there wants to fight you with a pipe.”

“Strong will destroy stupid raiders!” The mutant charges down the stairs and Leigh sighs.

“I would have been here sooner, but it took a while to get him to agree. You wouldn’t believe what I had to eat to get him to come.” A shot skims off the edge of MacCready’s cage.

“Reunion later, raiders now.” Leigh drags him out of the cage and the two of them take cover behind a barricade. There’s a mine box under the table: MacCready picks the lock with shaking hands and snatches one up, then throws it over the barricade.

“Fuck,” someone yells, and then the mine goes off. MacCready smiles.

“Got any more of those?” Leigh asks.

“Just one,” MacCready says.

“Leave it on the stairs. We’re getting to higher ground.”

“I can’t move. My leg won’t hold my weight.”

“So you’re MacBleeding?” Leigh says, rooting in his armor. He emerges with a stimpack and some Med-X and jams the stimpack roughly into MacCready’s arm.

“Really? You make that joke now?” A bullet whizzes over their head and they both flinch. 

“I might not be able to make it in the future.”

“Fair,” grunts MacCready, and injects the Med-X into his leg with shaking fingers. Sweet relief. Leigh peers over the top of the barricade and fires off a couple of rounds, then ducks back and grabs MacCready by the arm.

“Down! Now!” MacCready hits the ground hard enough to jar his chin and hears the low whine of a missile moments before the world exploded. A wave of heat scorches across his back and for a moment he thinks that he’s dead. Leigh scrambles to his feet and drags MacCready with him.

“Move it! I didn’t save you from that cage so you could die now!” The two of them hightail it up the stairs while the smoke’s still shielding them from sight. A blast from Leigh’s shotgun takes out the sentry at the top. MacCready snatches his rifle and peers over the top of the barricade. There! The man with the missile launcher. MacCready fires off a triangle of shots, but he only catches the man in the shoulder. The gun clicks on empty. He ducks behind the barricade, jams in the bullets with shaking hands, and squeezes off another shot just as the man’s lining up the rocket. Right in the side of the head.

“Grenade box,” Leigh hisses, and sends another round over the top. MacCready’s vision is receding, huge spots of white coming in and out of his vision. The run up the stairs was too much for him.

“Boss,” he says, and his throat sticks. I’m out, he thinks, but his lips can’t form the words. The ceiling has a skeleton in a cage dangling from it. MacCready’s glad he didn’t die in a cage.

 

MacCready wakes up to the blissful floating sensation of Med-X. His body feels both heavy and light, as though cool hands are pressing against his forehead, lifting him upwards. He can’t move his leg.

“Leigh?” he says.

“I’m here,” Leigh says. He’s taken off the mask and the raider armor and put on MacCready’s hat. MacCready swipes at it, but his hands move too slow.

“Gimme my hat,” he slurs, his dry throat catching on the words. Leigh snatches some water from a cooler and hands it to him. MacCready chugs it down, takes a deep breath, thanks Leigh, and passes out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, everyone! Writing fell a bit behind schedule because I was busy hiking up a volcano and almost being carried away by a wave.  
> No beta, so feel free to tell me if you notice any typos. 
> 
> Poor Leigh had to eat a human leg to get Strong to respect him enough to go along with this plan.


	4. caps for the collection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I got you a gift,” MacCready blurted out. "It's in the safe."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the original Chapter 4 of this story, which was written from Leigh's perspective. That's somewhere else now.
> 
> If you're new to the story, don't worry about it, just keep reading.

MacCready woke to the cotton taste of Med-X in his mouth and a terrible headache. Someone, probably Leigh, had left food and water by his bedside: he chugged it down and scraped some cram into his mouth. He was in a dark little room with three rickety, leaning walls, and artificial light was beaming through the windows. Still indoors, then. His rifle was next to his bed, loaded and ready. He took out the ammo and used it as a crutch, then went to find Leigh.

The room connected to a hallway, and the hallway led to a dimly-lit kitchen that stank of rotting meat and cigarette smoke. Leigh was slouched in a rickety raider chair smoking a cigarette bare-chested with a tired look on his face. Grease or something worse was smeared on his forearms; MacCready wanted to touch him, to smooth away the stains with his thumb and kiss him until he smiled.  

“What, you didn’t get enough smoke from the burning ramparts?” he said instead, sure that his crush must be glowing on his face.

“MacCready,” Leigh said, and his eyebrows pinched together like he was biting down on some private hurt. MacCready was ready to apologize, to carry anything, to give Leigh anything he asked for, anything at all- and then Leigh smiled. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“If is the afterlife, I feel cheated.”

“You fucker,” Leigh said, and exhaled a plume of smoke. “Jesus H Christ. I was half a mile out of there when I realized you weren’t behind me and I had to go back. You look like a kid with your hat off, you know that? How old are you, eighteen?”

“I’m twenty-two,” MacCready said, offended.  

“Well, that makes me feel better,” Leigh muttered.

“Don’t grow a conscience now,” MacCready said, amused, and sat down next to Leigh. “You didn’t exactly seduce me into the mercenary lifestyle.” He swiped a cigarette from Leigh’s pack and lit it. Sweet, sweet nicotine. Something in his chest settled down at the familiar taste of smoke. He exhaled slowly and let himself believe at last that had survived.

“Twenty-two,” Leigh said thoughtfully, and smiled at some private joke.

“Alright, old man, how old are you?” MacCready asked, tilting his head back in an effort to avoid looking tenderly at Leigh. The ceiling above them was badly made: cracks shone through the haphazardly assembled pieces of wood. Even with his eyes on the roof, MacCready could feel Leigh next to him like a heater in a cold room.

“I’m twenty-six, in years I remember…”

“Years you remember?” Leigh laughed.

“Fifteen caps says you can’t guess the year I was born. Hell, I bet you can’t guess within fifteen years of when I was born.” 

“Is the point where you tell me you’re an Institute robot? Because if you are, I’m okay with that.”

“You just don’t want me to capture you and replace you,” he said, and leaned one arm on MacCready’s shoulder and took a heavy drag of his cigarette with the other, his face haunted by something MacCready didn’t want to think about. While MacCready had been dying uselessly in his cage, Leigh had been down with the raiders.

“Hail the Institute, baby,” he said instead, and was rewarded with a smile from Leigh. “Are you a robot?” he continued. “I’m an expert on those, I’ve read all the Silver Shroud comics _and_ heard all the radio shows.”

“Nope, just the most attractive pre-war artifact in the Commonwealth. Born in the year 2052.” MacCready had forgotten about the whole pre-war thing. Part of him didn't really believe it, but Leigh treated it like it was true. Maybe it was. It would explain why there was no one else in the Commonwealth quite like Leigh. The other man was watching intently for MacCready’s reaction, so he made a point of taking a big showy drag of his cigarette and blowing smoke in the air before replying.

“No, I think KLEO’s got a better figure than you.” Leigh punched him in the shoulder and MacCready stuck his tongue out at him. “Also, I’ll have you know that years on ice don’t count. Four years isn’t that much older than me.”  

“Nah,” Leigh said, and stubs out his cigarette. “In treachery, I am ancient.”

“No shit. That was something else with those raiders. I, uh, thanks. You came back for me.” No one ever came back for MacCready, but Leigh had. He swallowed, embarrassed by his own gratitude. Leigh was silent, probably getting MacCready back for his teasing earlier. There was something like regret in his face.

“I’m glad you didn’t die,” he said at last, and shrugged. “Also, I now have a rocket launcher and a deathclaw pit.”

“A deathclaw pit?” Leigh went to the edge of the kitchen and pointed downwards. Movement on the bottom floor as the Deathclaw moved its snout upwards, scenting the air. MacCready shuddered.

“I’d offer to thank you with my body, but that’s kind of what got us into this mess.”

“No worries.” Leigh clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s exactly what I had in mind. Strong carried the armor back to Diamond City, but I need help with the guns.”

 

Another stimpack and some Med-X, and the two of them headed back to Diamond City. Despite his jibes, Leigh carried most of the loot back, and when MacCready offered to carry more Leigh glanced at his leg and shook his head. The trip back to Diamond City was silent, the two of them walking grimly through the rubbish, MacCready trying not to limp. When a single super mutant appeared halfway through the trip, Leigh blew it to hell with the missile launcher and wordlessly continued walking. Despite the man's light tone earlier, anger was rising off him like steam on a cold day. 

“I’m sorry,” MacCready blurted out. Leigh shook his head.

“Don’t apologize,” he said, and nothing else. Once they reached the city he dropped MacCready and his gear at the house and then bailed like his ass was on fire, leaving MacCready with his aching leg and a vague sense that he’d fucked up, maybe irreparably. He collapsed on the couch, feeling exhausted and out of place in Leigh’s clean house, an old pipe pistol accidentally tossed in with his collection of shiny, scoped toys.

God, he wanted to be Leigh’s so badly it was embarrassing.

He woke the next morning thirsty, hungry, and with a vague sense that he’d fallen asleep at some point. His leg ached.

“Come on,“ he mumbled to himself, “Get up. Get stitched. Don’t get caught next time.” Leigh kept all of his medical supplies in a near little container marked with a X by the door: MacCready fished out some gauze and blearily checked his leg. He’d hoped to have a very different experience of being in Leigh’s house with  his pants around his ankles. The slash on his thigh was healing nice and clean, a red scab already knitting across the skin. Stimpacks worked like fucking magic.

He napped, drank, stole some food from the fridge and then headed to Piper’s house.  When he poked his head in Cait was reclining on the couch with a beer, and Piper was nowhere in sight.

“She’s out with her sister,” Cait said, and hands him a beer. “Sit your ass down on the couch. What’s with the look?” MacCready sighed.

“That obvious, huh?”

“Yeah, kind of. Leigh came in here earlier looking like hell, and now you. What’s up with that?” MacCready summarized, omitting the kisses- how the raiders had captured him, the cage, Leigh, Strong.

“That kinda story deserves a drink,” Cait said when he’d finished. “Raiders are shits.” The vehemence with which she says the last word suggested a grudge.

“The raiders are dead,” MacCready said, and popped open the top of the beer Cait had handed him, then took a long, satisfied swig. It felt good to be alive.

“Well, good on you,” said Cait, and they drank until the light stopped slanting through the windows. MacCready was five beers deep before he could finally say the thing that had been bothering him, and Cait was more than half in his lap. It felt nice, not really sexy. Nice to feel someone touching him who didn’t want to cut his face off and make a wall decoration out of it.

“I think Leigh’s mad at me,” he said. “He just- left- without even a note.”

“Is that what got ya so sad?’ Cait said with a snort. “Jesus, MacCready. You’re pining like a kid with a crush.”

“I’m 22,’ he said. Cait’s cigarette fell out of her mouth.

“22!” she said, and grabbed his chin in one hand and swiveled him around to peer at his face. “Ya’re nothing but a damn kid!”

“I have a son,” he muttered. “I’m an adult.”

“Damn,” says Cait, and peered at him. “Where you keeping this kid at?”

‘He’s on a farm,” MacCready muttered. Damn. Cait was right, he was sulking like a goddamn child. Back in the gunners, it had been easy enough to apologize to his superiors- you bought them a drink, you did something risky and hopefully glorious, and all was well. Leigh was no gunner, but he carried himself like a military man. Hopefully he would take bribes like one.

“Hey, Cait, you want to go raid a place with me?’

“What, like go and run an errand, like with Leigh? We ain’t that close, MacCready, even if we’re drinking some beers.”

“I was going to raid a brewery. It’ll probably be fun.” Cait considered.

“And then you’re going to bring back some stuff for Leigh,’ she accused, pointing at him with her beer. “I’m not helping you carry your dumb unnecessary gift.”

“Duh,” said MacCready. “I was more thinking you’d be interested in the chems stash. I bet there’s more beer in the factory than I can carry.” He took the beer out of her hand and finished it, and she sneered at him and lay down across the couch, her head in his lap. She was beautiful in the warm glow of mild drunkenness, poised with her bottle in her hand, the scars on her arms stark in the white moonlight. MacCready waited. With someone like Cait, you couldn’t push them too hard, or they wouldn’t go just to spite you. Besides, he could probably go it alone, though it wouldn’t be as fun. Raiders weren’t shit when they weren’t in power armor, chucking grenades through your window while you tried to get a kiss.

“Gwinnett?” she says at last.

“Yeah.”

“You think you could kill a raider with that junkjet of Leigh’s?” MacCready thought about it.

“You know, I think I could. Shit, do you think I could take someone’s head off with a teddy bear?”

“Fuck, man,” said Cait, and sat up so fast she almost caught MacCready’s chin with the top of her head.  “Let’s fucking try it.”

“Right now?”

“There are probably some raiders two blocks from here! I’m not going on no raid with someone too scared to even leave the city,” Cait said.

“You try shooting drunk,” MacCready muttered, but he followed her.

 

As promised, they ran into raiders two blocks out from Diamond City, some group of low-level idiots hopped up on mentats who thought they were going to be the ones to ransack Diamond City despite all the evidence that they really weren’t. MacCready’s vision was still wobbling a little, but he pulled himself together enough to hold his breath and squeeze off a shot. The junkjet was a clunky off-balance piece of shit and it kicked like a bitch with each shot, so he aimed for the center of mass and was rewarded with the pleasure of seeing a raider get nailed with a teddy bear.

“Fucking got ‘em!” Cait hollered. The junkjet wobbled as she loaded something else in.

MacCready peered down the scope and sure enough, a pissed looking raider was running up the alley towards them, wrench in hand. The second teddy bear got him in the stomach hard enough to stagger him, almost knocking him of his feet. Cait was giggling like crazy.

“Load something,” he snapped. The raider was getting closer and MacCready was far too drunk for a hand to hand fight in a dead-end alley.

“Broom!” she said with a giggle. There was a clunk in the back, and the junkjet lurched and made the ammo loaded noise.

“Broom?” asked MacCready, and fired the gun. The raider slumped to the ground, a broom protruding from one eye socket. “Holy shit, broom,” he said, and lowered the junkjet. Cait looked at him and they both burst into laughter.

“Did you- did you see when the teddy bear hit him, he staggered-”

“When it hit him in the face- did you see how he looked?”

“This is awesome,” MacCready said, quite possibly still very drunk. Cait kissed him then and there, up against the grimy old wall of some bombed out husk. She smelled like whiskey and chems and all the bad ideas MacCready never had the sense not to go through with. They kissed until the sound of footsteps reminded them that they were not alone. Cait grinned at him and snatched her baseball bat off the ground.

“Watch this, snipey,” she said, and marched around the corner.

It was a home run.

 

It was a little over two weeks before Leigh came back to Diamond City. MacCready spent most of them with Cait, raiding old warehouses and visiting bars and egging each other on to steal small things from Diamond City houses. They were a great team, Cait at short range and MacCready at long range, and between them there was a kind of perfect mutual understanding MacCready had rarely had with anyone else. If Leigh was a plasma pistol, beautiful and expensive, Cait was like MacCready’s old rifle, scratched and dented and reliably deadly. In a world where MacCready didn’t go to sleep on Leigh’s bed every night and drink his beer in the morning, he would have wanted Cait to be his partner, but this wasn’t that world. Cait came when Piper called, and though they fucked once, it was just a bit of fun while drunk, and in the morning Cait went back to Piper’s house.

Leigh came back late one night, when Cait was drunk enough to try and teach MacCready how to fight hand to hand. She’d pinned him on the couch and was ruthlessly tickling his ribs while MaccReady tried fruitlessly to wiggle out of her grasp.

“Use your fucking arm strength, MacCready! If anyone ever actually pins you you’re dead meat.” Leigh caught his eye over Cait’s shoulder and smirked.

“Hey, boss,” MacCready said weakly.

“Hey!” Cait said, totally unconcerned, and punched MacCready in the stomach lightly. “Your boyfriend’s back, so now you can stop being sad.” MacCready scowled at her and she winked, totally unconcerned, then hopped off his chest, strode over to Leigh and caught him in a one armed hug.  “Not the same without ya around to make trouble.”

“We should make trouble together sometime, then,” he told her, and damn if that didn't sound like a different kind of invitation. MacCready had it bad. “You and MacCready can both come, and we’ll set the world on fire. You’ve got to promise to leave some stuff for us poor long range folks, though.” Cait just laughed at Leigh.  

“Ya wouldn't believe what he can do with a junkjet,” she said with a little tilt of her head in MacCready’s direction. MacCready was going to have to buy her a beer when all of this was over. Leigh glanced at MacCready with a thoughtful look in his eye that made MacCready’s face burn. He covered his face with his hat and tried to sink into the couch cushions.

“I’ll leave the two of you to kiss and make-up,” Cait said with a wave of her hand, and left, taking a bottle of Leigh’s whiskey with her. Leigh’s steps were loud in the suddenly silent house as he headed slowly to the couch. Just imagining his response was making MacCready’s blush worse. At last, Leigh took mercy on him and spoke.

“Kiss and make-up, huh?”  

“She’s smug ever since she caught me reading that Grognak comic,” MacCready muttered, trying not to blush. “Anytime she wants anything she just threatens to rip it up.” Leigh glanced at his comics and MacCready smiled at him sheepishly. “I know, right?” Leigh sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“We’re such fucking nerds, I’m ashamed,” Leigh said with a sigh, and flopped down on the couch next to MacCready, his thigh brushing MacCready’s foot. MacCready straightened hastily to allow Leigh to sit next to him on the couch.

“I got you a gift,” he blurted out.

“Oh?” said Leigh. MacCready mumbled an apology in a voice so low he wasn’t even entirely sure what he’d said. Leigh was looking at him fondly: MacCready bit his lip and regretted it immediately.

 “It’s in the safe,” he said, and nervously watched Leigh open his gift. MacCready had laid out two of each type of ammo in the safe, from 10mm to fusion cores. One of the fusion cores he’d found, but the other he’d had to buy.

“You’re a marvel,” Leigh said, and took out one of the fusion cores and weighed it in his hand. “What is all of this for? Did you kill my dog?”

“No! It’s- I wanted to thank you for saving me from the raiders. I shouldn’t have let myself get captured.”

“That was my fault,” Leigh said in a flat voice. MacCready gaped at him. Leigh’s fault, that MacCready had been captured, had gotten himself hit like the greenest vaultie ever to crawl out of the ground. Leigh had stormed off afterwards because MacCready had proven himself useless- useless as a partner, useless at keeping watch.

“Come on,” said MacCready.

“No. MacCready, baby. I wasn’t mad at you. I was mad at myself. I was the one that distracted us, and you were the one that got hurt.” He crossed the distance between the safe and the couch and slid in next to MacCready.

“Then, why did you leave?”

“I had some personal stuff that I couldn’t wait on and I… I didn’t want to take you along. I thought you needed time to heal.” Fuck, what an embarrassing thing to hear, like MacCready hadn’t walked off almost dying like once a week when he was in the Gunners. You got used to it. Leigh was looking guilty. “I didn’t want you to get hurt on my command,” he said quietly. This was too much.

“I don’t need to be coddled!” MacCready said fiercely.  “I killed a bunch of stuff to get that ammo, Leigh! Raiders, super mutants, a deathclaw, one of those ghouls that glows...just because I got hurt once, that doesn’t mean you should dump me! I started drinking when I was six, Leigh, I killed someone for the first time when I was ten!”

“Ten? That’s… that’s younger than me.” MacCready scowled.

“I would have thought that you would see that just because I’m not a fucking brotherhood of steel meathead that doesn’t mean I’m useless.”

“I don’t think you’re useless,” Leigh said, looking confused. “I like you. I’m sorry. I don’t know. The whole thing with the raiders messed me up and I wanted some time alone. Quit yelling at me, I’m sorry I left you behind.” MacCready deflated.  

“Sorry,” he muttered, and sank into the couch.

“Me too,” Leigh offered after a pause. He glanced at the fusion core, then paused and gave MacCready a quick, chaste kiss on the cheek. Fuck no. MacCready didn’t want chaste kisses, didn’t need to be wrapped in tissue paper. He grabbed Leigh by the shoulders and kissed him like he’d been wanting to since walking into the raider kitchen to find Leigh weary and gorgeous in the dim light. Leigh’s lips were warm against MacCready’s, and he kissed back open-mouthed and hungry, like he’d just been waiting for MacCready to come him. The fusion core thunked to the ground as MacCready, giddy with relief, stuck his hands up Leigh’s shirt and touched him, relishing the warmth of his skin, the way the muscles shifted.

He’d been wanting Leigh for so long it felt unreal to actually touch him. Things never went this well. Rich, spoiled soldiers didn’t go on dangerous missions to save mercenaries they’d hired in the back of a shit bar, and handsome men didn’t invite MacCready into their homes and kiss him breathless on the couch.  

A pause, and Leigh hesitated on the front button of MacCready’s shirt, as though there was any possibility at all that MacCready would say no. He nodded and tried not to groan when Leigh bit his neck gently.

“May I?” Leigh murmured against his throat, one of his fingers under the band of MacCready’s boxers. It took a moment for MacCready to register what Leigh was asking, but when he got it he wiggled his eyebrows at Leigh and made a big show of popping the front button on his jeans and pulling his boxers down.

“All yours, boss,” he said, and laughed at Leigh’s expression. Leigh pinned him against the arm of the sofa, and kissed him hard, his tight around MacCready’s dick. All that ammo, and it still felt like MacCready was the one getting a gift. He snuck his hand between the two of them and ground the palm of his hand against Leigh’s dick.

“Don’t be a tease,” Leigh said breathlessly.

“Me?” said MacCready, and reached into the front of Leigh’s pants. He hadn’t been with a man before, though he’d looked plenty, but he had plenty of experience jacking off. When MacCready touched him Leigh’s back arched, just a little, and his eyes fluttered closed. MacCready wanted to take him apart and put him back together, to know him like his favorite gun.

“You,” said Leigh breathlessly. One of Leigh’s hands was on MacCready’s dick, the other on the curve of his neck. MacCready whimpered when Leigh tugged on his hair and bit his arm gently, trying not to make any more noise. It didn’t work. Leigh’s hand was steady, sliding up and down on MacCready’s dick, and his mouth was hot on MacCready’s neck, his teeth making MacCready groan and arch. Sparks were rising in his spine, each slide of Leigh’s hand making him more desperate, unraveled, reduced to nothing but want.

“Fuck,” he said, eyes squeezed shut, and used the last of his control to let go of Leigh before surrendering to the absolute pleasure of his climax, lost in a flood of sensation.. It was a few seconds before he realized that his eyes were closed, and a few more after he opened them to realize that Leigh was watching his face intently, a little frown of concentration on his face, as though MacCready was some kind of fascinating puzzle. MacCready flushed and pulled him into a kiss with one hand and stroked his dick with the other. Leigh groaned and buried his face in the curve of MacCready’s neck, his breath hitching, and came, his moan stifled against MacCready’s skin.

MacCready’s hand was on Leigh’s side: he ran his fingers idly over Leigh’s side and settled slowly back into his skin. Leigh’s head was pleasantly warm and heavy on his neck, and he smelled like power armor oil and sex. They lay sleepily on the couch, Leigh’s breath a pleasant rise and fall against his overheated skin. At last Leigh sighed and kissed the side of MacCready’s neck and spoke, his voice a soft, low rumble.

“I assume you changed your opinion of the sexy enforcer lifestyle?” he asked, his lips brushing the side of MacCready's neck when he spoke.

“Now you ask me,” MacCready said, and tilted his head to look at Leigh. Leigh’s hand was warm on the side of MacCready’s face and his smile was soft and open. “I’m not wearing a dress, but I’m, uh, open to further negotiations,” MacCready said, his mind stuttering on the idea that he could have this not once, but over and over again.

“By negotiations you mean, sex, right?”

“What do you think?” MacCready asked. He paused and touched Leigh’s lip thoughtfully. “How do two men have sex, anyway? Aside from this. Blowjobs? Are blowjobs sex?” The thought of Leigh giving him a blowjob was overwhelming: he would have let raiders break both of his legs if he had known it would end like this. Leigh covered MacCready’s hand with his own and gave him a sharp grin.

“I could give you a blowjob and we could find out.” MacCready’s blush felt like fire across his cheeks: he grinned helplessly back at Leigh.

“Maybe later, when I’m less covered in jizz. Gross, it’s on my shirt.”

“Disagree,” said Leigh. “I think you look very attractive with jizz on you.” He ran a finger from MacCready’s abs to the base of his dick and licked his finger in a slow, lazy motion that made MacCready’s mind jam like an old gun and stay jammed until Leigh stopped and smirked at him.  

“I like you so much,” MacCready muttered. “I don’t know why you even had to ask.”

“You’re the one who said no to begin with,” Leigh pointed out. “Besides, people get up to all sorts of stuff they don't mean in a barracks, and the whole world is a barracks these days.”

“I would pick you anywhere. And if we’re gonna fuck, you should probably call me RJ.” No one really called him that, but it would be nice to hear it from Leigh, to be something more than just a hired gun to someone.

“RJ,” Leigh said, and MacCready registered dimly that Leigh had come back, and they’d fucked on the couch, and now they were- something. Together.

He was going to buy Cait like three beers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -This is not the original chapter 4, which was written in Leigh's perspective. I originally wanted to do alternating POV's, but that didn't shake out, so this chapter had to be rewritten.  
> -It is my personal headcanon that in the wasteland everyone is assumed to be poly unless they explicitly get monogamously married.  
> \- We're in the past tense, and will be from now on. Let me know if I've dropped any of my tenses, this isn't beta'd.


	5. brotherhood and other bullshit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They arrived late to Elder Maxson’s speech late and stood in the back. Elder Maxson was at the front, his back turned to the room, shouting furiously into the clear panels, something about how synths and not giant fuck-off warships were the biggest threat to the commonwealth. Danse and Leigh had taken off their armor for the speech, so it was easy for MacCready to lean quietly over and whisper in Leigh’s ear that Danse had a great ass. Leigh choked, earning the two of them a glare from the closest brotherhood member.

Cait and Piper strolled into as MacCready was scooping the last of the crab cakes off the pan. Cait sniffed the air and snickered.

“More than just a kiss to make-up, eh, MacCready,” she said, and stole one of the crab cakes. MacCready’s reflection in the stove was grinning like a maniac, but he didn’t care. His head was buzzing like he’d drunk half a bottle of whiskey.

“I wouldn’t sit on the couch if I were you.”

“Oh- ew, seriously?” said Piper, looking scandalized. “You couldn’t make it up the stairs?”

“We were in a hurry,” Leigh said, emerging from the make-shift bathroom clean-shaven and handsome in a tuxedo, the hickey on his neck clear as day. “If we’d known you ladies were coming, we could have waited.” The comment sounded like Leigh was auditioning for a sex hotline. A small part of MacCready was disappointed that Leigh was flirting with other people, but at least he was advertising himself and MacCready as a package deal. As a we.

Cait elbowed Piper, who kept looking at Leigh, then at MacCready, then back to Leigh. A slow smile spread across Piper’s face, and she took out a pen and paper and headed for MacCready. Shit.

“Ya’re in trouble now, MacCready, she got out the pen.” Cait commented.

“Could I get a statement?” Piper asked MacCready.

“Hey, hey,” said Leigh. “I thought you ran a newspaper, not a tabloid?” Piper ignored him.

“I was thinking of running a lifesize cut out in the paper,” she said earnestly to MacCready. “You know, to add a little humor to the newspaper. Do you think you could give me an estimate?” She made a gesture with her hands.

“Uh, no comment,” MacCready said. He was saved by a knock on the door.

“It’s Nick,” Leigh said, and Piper headed for the door.

“Nicky!” she said, and escorted him in.

“Looks like the circus is back in town,” Valentine commented, glancing around Leigh’s crowded living room.

“And you’re the head clown,” Piper said. “So, Nicky, what brings you to Leigh’s place?”

“Just wanted to ask about a case we’d been working on together,” Valentine said.

“He’s dead,” Leigh said, satisfaction in his voice. MacCready registered two things: one, that Leigh was very attractive when he was talking about killing people, and two, that Piper and Nick were in on this, but Cait wasn’t. Interesting. He’d have to ask about it later. Leigh caught MacCready’s eye and winked. “Let’s talk business later, Nick. No use in letting a perfectly good plate of crab cakes get cold.”

“I’ll pass,” Valentine said, and sat down on the couch. Piper and MacCready made eye contact and burst into immediate, helpless laughter. Dinner rolled on, and then drinks and drunken poker and pool. It was cold and dark when Piper and Cait finally stumbled out the door, clinging to each other and laughing. MacCready’s memories of the night faded after the whiskey with Cait, but one memory lingered: waking in Leigh’s bed to the sound of bullets being loaded into a gun. In the morning, Leigh was asleep on the couch, and MacCready’s rifle was clean, stripped and remade by careful hands.

 

It was a little before noon when Leigh leaned in and told MacCready that one, he was very attractive and two, they were being watched. Leigh had woken up late and dragged MacCready to power noodles in an effort to fight off the previous day’s alcohol. They were just finishing their food when Leigh turned to MacCready and spoke.

“You want to go back to my place?” Leigh’s voice was low and smooth in a way Travis could never hope to emulate, even with his newfound confidence: it sounded like how an ache felt,  like hands caressing skin. “Later, though. One of the guards is spying on us. Nice blush, by the way. Great cover. Makes it look like I’m just hitting on you.”

“You are hitting on me,” MacCready muttered. Leigh had probably said that just to make MacCready red, the bastard. “Which guard is it?”

“It’s the guard with the sunglasses and the black hair, over Takahashi's shoulder.” MacCready called Takahashi over, eyes skimming over the guard. Pale skin, nondescript face, dark hair, sunglasses, modified pistol.

“Got it. What’s the plan?”

“Head to Piper’s place and grab one of those cans of ink she has lying around, then meet me in the alley behind the bar.” He flashed a grin at MacCready like a triggerman flashing his gun in a shady bar, provocation and warning all at once, and rose and headed to one of the merchants. MacCready scowled at his retreating back.

He retrieved a bottle of ink and a pen from Piper’s cellar, stole a water out of the fridge to punish Cait for sleeping in, and then headed to the alley. When he walked in, Leigh had the man up against the wall, a knife tight against the big vein in the side of their throat.

“Ink,” he said flatly, not looking away from the guard.

“Hey, man, let’s not get crazy here-” the guard said, his voice trailing off when Leigh poured ink on his forehead.

“This,” Leigh said pleasantly, “is in case you think you can hide from me again.” Leigh seemed to have the situation under control, so MacCready headed to the mouth of the alley to keep watch. What was the old saying? What they don’t know can’t hurt you? MacCready lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall. Leigh was just audible this far out.

“Gather your information for whoever you’re working for- I don’t care- but if I catch you or anyone else watching me, the ears and nose come off. Got it?” It was both a surprise and not that Leigh had caught a spy: a surprise, because Leigh was a soldier, and not a surprise, because he was Leigh. Gunners, the Brotherhood of Steel- they dismissed everyone who wasn’t a fellow soldier. They didn’t notice these things. MacCready wondered whether all the pre-war soldiers had been like Leigh, or whether he’d been exceptional even then.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the guard said.

“I’ll cut off your balls,” Leigh said conversationally. From the sharp intake of breath, MacCready could guess more or less where Leigh’s knife was.

A guard was heading around the corner. MacCready tapped his foot on the wall, pretending to shake something off his foot.

“Let’s not have this talk again,” Leigh suggested, and came striding out of the alley, the knife already vanishing up his sleeve. They walked casually past the guard and headed towards the Diamond City gate at a brisk pace.

“Nice job with the watch,” Leigh said, and put his arm around MacCready’s waist, his hand trailing over MacCready’s hipbone. It was just an observation. There was no reason it should feel like finding ten caps in a forgotten pocket, and yet.

“Didn’t figure you for a knifey kind of guy,’ MacCready muttered. I’ve got it bad, he thought. Love was a surprise the first time, but you learned to recognize it when it came sneaking up the second time, gun in hand.

“I used to fence when I was younger, but it’s been years. In the army we had a section on knives, but I mostly just learned flashy tricks to impress girls.” Lie, thought MacCready idly, although he wasn’t sure why. Hmm. If Leigh weren’t comfortable with the knife, he would have used a gun in the interrogation instead: he owned a small pistol that would have worked perfectly. They collected Leigh’s power armor and hurried to the gate.

“How’d you know he was a spy?” MacCready asked in an undertone as the guards hoisted open the gate to the outside, inch by inch.

“I keep seeing him around,” Leigh muttered, the sound muffled by the power armor. “In Diamond City. Goodneighbor. Bunker Hill, twice, although he changed his stupid wig. At first I thought I was being paranoid, but he didn’t react like a guard. A guard would have yelled, not listened to what I was saying.” Maybe Leigh had been in a lot of urban combat before the war, or worked undercover?

“Do you think the guard was Institute?” Silence from Leigh, and then a sound that could have been a sigh or just a breath.

“I don’t know,” Leigh said. They were a few blocks from Diamond City, out of range of the guards, well out into the actual commonwealth and heading north. MacCready readied his rifle and scanned the tops of the buildings for raiders, letting Leigh keep track of the street with his pip-boy. Leigh wasn’t bad at fighting: it was just that he was better at everything else.

“So, what’s our destination? When are we going to fuck? You can't just hit on me and then not come through.” Leigh snorted and burst out laughing.

“Anytime you want, baby.”

“Liar. You say that, but I bet you’re taking me to some creepy hospital where all the beds have skeletons in them.”

“We could make it a threesome,” Leigh said. McCready gave him a sideways look.

“Not be picky, but I prefer only to have sex with people who still have skin.” Leigh snickered.

“Hancock will be so disappointed.” Leigh hadn’t mentioned knowing Hancock, but MacCready would have been surprised if he didn’t. Leigh seemed to make it his mission to know everyone, and Hancock was near the top of any list of “people to know in the Commonwealth.”

“Did you and Hancock…?”

“Oh, Christ, no. I’m still not used to ghouls. Not that he’s not a good guy, but not really my type. I prefer snipers, they always have nice rifles.” MacCready flushed.

“Is this more cover? Someone watching us through a scope or something?”

“I fucking hope not,” said Leigh. The helmet moved as he scanned from side to side. “All clear.” He looked at straight at MacCready and MacCready knew without needing to look at his face that he was grinning and preparing to say something stupid. “Are you a sniper? Because you shot me through the heart.” MacCready shook his head, grinning.

“Please, I would go for the headshot.”

“Traitor,” said Leigh, sounding scandalized. “I work my ass off to support this family, and you shoot me in the head. What will the children think?”

“And by the children, you mean…”

“Piper and Cait, obviously.” MacCready snorted, but he was pleased. It was dangerous to let people know how much you liked them, but Leigh hadn’t thrown it back in his face yet. Hope was a son of a bitch that had let MacCready down on every possible occasion, but he was beginning to hope that Leigh wanted this, wanted MacCready as badly as MacCready wanted him. It ached in his chest, made him stumble around like a drunk. It was hard to focus on the scanning the rooftops when Leigh could make the world tilt just by referring to the two of them as a family.

“I’ll be sure to tell Piper you called her a child as part of our exclusive interview,” MacCready said and made a gesture like he was measuring something small with his hands.

“Nope,” said Leigh.

“You can’t stop me,” MacCready informed him and the world tilted. MacCready was picked up and slung over the side of Leigh’s power armor like a sack of cram, swaying to the rhythm of the power armor’s steps. He smacked his fist against the side of the power armor, laughing helplessly.

“Hey- hey. No fair! If you’re going to grab me, at least use a pick-up line!” Leigh’s laugh was louder this close to his helmet.

“I’ve used like a hundred pick up lines on you, RJ,” he said, his voice warm even through the clank and hiss of the power armor.

“You can’t save them up,” MacCready said, and bonked Leigh lightly on the top of the helmet. There was a ridge on the front of the power armor: MacCready wedged his toes into it and lifted himself onto Leigh’s shoulder.

“Hey, hey,” said Leigh.

“You brought it on yourself,” said MacCready unmercifully, and made finger guns with one hand, then mimed shooting Leigh in the head. Through the glass of the helmet, he could see that Leigh was smiling.

 

The streets were oddly quiet, clean of ferals or raiders, although several times MacCready heard the distant rattle of gunfire or passed corpses in the street, the pavement cracked and distorted from the spray of mini-gun bullets. Black vertibirds kept buzzing overhead, all of them flying in the same direction. When MacCready tried to examine them through his binoculars, Leigh pushed his hand down gently.

“Those birds are probably shooting down anything that looks halfway threatening. Better not to point anything at them.”

“Fucking Brotherhood,” MacCready muttered. “They’re like the enclave all over again.”

“Enclave?”

“Damn, have I got a story for you.” The story of the fight for the water purifier took them all the way up to Cambridge. The police station was bristling with enough weaponry to blast a way into Diamond City: fresh brotherhood goons toting miniguns and clanking in their noisy, expensive power armor.

“Play along,” Leigh said, and they went in.

“Miniguns,” MacCready muttered under his breath as Leigh greeted the doormen. “The last resort of those too stupid to be able to take a good shot.” MacCready did not like power armor: it made his sniping skills useless, it was expensive, it was loud, and inevitably it made the person using it think they were better than everyone else instead of a monkey in a suit.

“Only Brotherhood permitted in here,” one of the monkeys said to Leigh.

“I am Brotherhood. Fix your calibrator, son, you’re buzzing like a fly, and don’t hassle the contractors. Come on, MacCready.” MacCready followed Leigh into the building with a smirk at the doorman. Inside, someone with the ridiculous name of ‘Paladin Danse’ greeted Leigh and gave him the condescending nod of an officer. Leigh responded with a crisp, sharp salute and stood at attention as Danse explained the situation, serious as any other Brotherhood lug. Was Leigh Brotherhood? It made more sense than the explanation that Leigh was a 200 year old veteran, but he didn’t seem like Brotherhood. He was too smart. Did the Brotherhood have spies?

They went to the roof. There was a brief argument: Danse didn’t want MacCready to get on board the vertibird. Leigh did. MacCready had never been on a vertibird, so he stood there and tried not to look like a “filthy wasteland mercenary”, in the pilot’s words, and mentally resolved to steal everything the Brotherhood hadn’t nailed down. Leigh won the argument and they all clambered on, Leigh at the minigun and MacCready with his rifle. The vertibird lifted up, giving MacCready a beautiful view of all the best places to build a sniper’s nest in Cambridge, and then they took off, skimming through the air. Leigh grabbed MacCready by one leg- Brotherhood of Steel vertibirds were designed on the assumption that anyone who fell out would be wearing power armor- and the two of them sat and watched the Commonwealth skim by under them.

“Why are we going to the Brotherhood?” MacCready asked, not bothering to keep his voice down. The chop-chop of the vertibird blades meant that no one could hear him but Leigh.

“When I see a big fuck-off blimp come into town, I want to know what the people on it are planning.” MacCready thought about this.

“It’s pretty obvious. It’s an invasion force. They’re going to take the Commonwealth like they did the Capital Wasteland.” He was surprised at the bitterness in his own voice.

“Are you going to be okay? You don’t need to pretend to love them, but don’t mess up my recon.” Recon. That was reassuring: Leigh wasn’t some kind of undercover brotherhood spy- he was just scoping out an enemy base, like he’d done with the raiders.

“I won’t,” MacCready said. A shadow fell over the vertibird. The air was cold this high up, and despite his coat and scarf MacCready had been been glad of the sun. He shivered.

“Look,” Leigh said, his voice tight.

“The Prydwen,” said Danse, and that was when MacCready saw the airship. His first impression was of a bloated brahmin corpse surrounded by sucking flies: the ship was alive with soldiers, black vertibirds hurrying to and from the dock, men running along walkways, swarming with life. An invasion force, a show of power, a gun aimed at everyone’s head.  

“Shit.” No one heard him over the rapid chop-chop of the helicopter blades. A crackle over the radio, and then they ascended and docked. It was windy in the vertibird bay, and the floor swayed whenever a new vertibird docked, which was often. MacCready glanced over the side and had a sudden vertiginous flashback to the pools and hanging bridges of Little Lamplight. A smile crossed his face: even this high up, a bridge was a bridge. He let go of the handrail and hurried after Leigh.

A soldier met them in the middle of the swaying, teetering mess of pathways: some kind of officer, judging by the proprietary way he glanced over the airport. Despite the wind, he walked with perfect confidence, not using the rails. Score one for the Brotherhood, MacCready thought sourly. Leigh and the officer had a brief conversation, the man not bothering to hide his disdain for the new soldier, and then Danse escorted them into the Prydwen. MacCready made sure to bump the officer with his shoulder on his way in.

They arrived late to Elder Maxson’s speech late and stood in the back. Elder Maxson was at the front, his back turned to the room, shouting furiously into the clear panels, something about how synths and not giant fuck-off warships were the biggest threat to the commonwealth. Danse and Leigh had taken off their armor for the speech, so it was easy for MacCready to lean quietly over and whisper in Leigh’s ear that Danse had a great ass. Leigh choked, earning the two of them a glare from the closest brotherhood member. Undeterred, MacCready continued.

“Why do you think they wear these skin-tight uniforms? Do you think when they have sex they just lie back and think of the Brotherhood?” Up front, Elder Maxson continued his speech about how synths replacing people was pretty shit, which was the closest to a reasonable point he’d come all speech.

“Do you think the stick up his ass interferes with his posture much?”

“Blow me,” Leigh whispered back.

After the speech ended, Leigh got called up to talk to Elder Maxson. He straightened into the same stupid pose Danse had used when he talked to Kells, his hands behind his back, and flipped off MacCready where Maxson couldn’t see.

“You, wastelander. What are you doing here?” Maxson demanded.

“I’m assisting Leigh ass needed,” MacCready said, trying not to laugh. Leigh flipped him off with both hands.

“Go outside, this is confidential Brotherhood business.” MacCready left the cabin, only to be caught by the arm by Danse.

“Why aren’t you with Leigh?” he asked. Leigh, not Initiate Leigh. Interesting.

“Maxy sent me out,” MacCready said, wrenching his arm out of Danse’s hand. “I thought I’d better wait for Leigh out here. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been instructed to provide support to Leigh in his ground operations,” Danse said stiffly.

“So he won’t get your warship dirty by bringing me up? Get ready to carry a lot of desk fans.” Up close, Paladin Danse was tall, with a square jawline, good teeth, and the careful pronunciation of a man who was trying not sound like a dirty wastelander. MacCready hated him on sight.

“Desk fans?” Leigh came sweeping out before MacCready could reply. He announced that he’d been promoted to knight, clapped Danse on the shoulder and thanked him for sponsoring him into the Brotherhood. When MacCready made eye contact with him, he tilted his head slightly, as if they were sneaking through a building. Go over there. Over there was an out of the way alcove where MacCready could sink into his coat and eavesdrop on Leigh flirting in the absent-minded way he flirted with everyone. With Danse, it mostly involved name-dropping his time in the noble army of the Good Ol’ USA and unironically talking about Duty and Honor. None of it was particularly interesting, although MacCready perked up when Danse asked Leigh ‘to control his wasteland associate” and Leigh agreed, politely.

Afterwards, Leigh hustled MacCready into a bathroom. The door was barely shut before Leigh buried his face in the collar of MacCready’s coat and dissolved into hysterical laughter.

“You fucker, don’t make me laugh when Elder Maxson is talking, you’ll get both of us tossed off the edge.” His voice came out muffled by the collar.

“He does have a fat ass, though.” When Leigh laughed, MacCready could feel it on the side of his neck like a kiss.

“RJ, you’re awful,” Leigh said, and bit the side of his neck gently. It was the lightest scrape of teeth, but it made MacCready hot down to the pit of his stomach. “Make it up to me?”

“What did you have in mind?”  Leigh responded by kissing him again, a full body kiss, his whole body sliding against MacCready, their legs tangled together, Leigh’s hand around his wrist, pinning him to the wall, too much and not nearly enough. MacCready wanted him so badly it was like being a teenager all over again. Leigh leaned in, his whole body flush against MacCready, and spoke.

“Like I said earlier: blow me.” Fuck. That was appealing, the thought of having Leigh on Maxson’s own ship, doing something forbidden together while outside the soldiers walked past, oblivious to the two of them...

“If I’d known we were coming here to fuck, I would have been way more enthusiastic about it,” MacCready said, popping the button on Leigh’s pants open. Leigh was already hard, and his breath hitched when MacCready closed his hand around him.

“Wherever you want, baby,” Leigh said, his voice strained. MacCready smirked at him and went down on his knees. He’d never given a blowjob before, but he was familiar with what he liked on the other end: Leigh couldn’t be too different. Up close, Leigh’s dick was pinkish-brown, too long for MacCready to reasonably try to fit all of it in his mouth. He fit his his hand around it and took the head in his mouth, and was rewarded with a groan.

“Unh--- please,” Leigh said breathlessly and MacCready started to move in earnest, his lips sliding up and down to meet his hand. His dick was uncomfortably hard: he undid his zipper shakily with one hand and began to stroke himself, his hands moving in time with his mouth. He felt hot, shaky, breathless with want. He’d never been with a man before, but that only made it better: strange, exciting, like finding an new issue of your favorite book when you thought you’d read all the volumes. Leigh’s hand was on MacCready’s shoulder, his fingers digging into MacCready’s shoulder, his other hand braced on the wall, his hips moving slightly as he made little noises in the back of his throat.

“Fuck,” Leigh said, and came all over the clean brotherhood tile.

“You're welcome,” said MacCready breathlessly, his hand already down his own pants.

“My turn,” said Leigh and pulled MacCready to his feet.  

There was a loud knock on the door.

“Use a different bathroom,” said Leigh angrily. The knocking continued, louder.  

“I fucking hate the Brotherhood of Steel,” MacCready said. Leigh kissed him, turned the ventilation on and opened the door an inch.

“What the fuck do you want?” he said.

“Elder Maxson wants to talk to you,” said the messenger. From the sound of his voice, he couldn’t have been older than thirteen.

“I’m having a meeting with my associate,” Leigh said. “Come back later.”

“I have instructions to wait until you’re available,” the kid said.

“Christ,” said Leigh, and closed the door. He looked at MacCready and sighed. “The kid’s like thirteen, MacCready.”

“I fucking hate the Brotherhood of Steel,” MacCready repeated, but he zipped up his pants and let Leigh wipe off the tile and toss the rag in the toilet. They still smelled like sex- well, the kid probably didn’t even know what that meant. Leigh tucked MacCready’s scarf over his hickey and bent him over the sink in a breathless kiss.

“Later, I promise,” he said.

“I’ll hold you to that,” MacCready muttered.

 

It turned out that Maxson wanted to ask Leigh about pre-war America. Once MacCready had recovered from the powerful, suicidal desire to punch Maxson in the face, he realized that he’d never heard Leigh talk about the past.

“What rank did you have in the United States army?” Maxson was asking.

“I was an engineer officer, rank 12A, with a medal for distinction earned during Operation Anchorage.”

“You fought in Operation Anchorage?”

“Are you familiar with it?” Leigh asked slowly. Maxson nodded and gestured for Leigh to continue. “I assisted troops retaking the Pipeline and helped develop the Nuclear Engineering Program to increase the duration of power cores. The medal was for holding a vital position against enemy soldiers by myself after the death of everyone else in my unit.”

“Impressive,” said Elder Maxson. Leigh shrugged.

“I did what I was supposed to do, sir.”

“Very good. I can see that you will be a great asset. Report to Proctor Ingram and see if you have any imput on our suits. Initiate Davies will take you down to her. Dismissed.”

“Ad victoriam,” Leigh said, and followed Initiate Davies to the belly of the ship, MacCready trailing behind. Proctor Ingram’s workshop was cramped and stank of oil and antifreeze, but Leigh’s face lit up when he saw it.

“Better than anything in the wasteland, isn’t it?” Proctor Ingram asked him.

“You wouldn’t believe the bullshit I’ve been putting up with,” Leigh said, and launched into a rant about the inadequacy of the welding tools and aluminium and everything else in the wasteland. “It’s nice to be with people who know what they’re doing,” he concluded. On a bullshit scale of one to ten, MacCready rated this a five. The wasteland was pretty shit, but Leigh’s workshops at his settlements were all well-stocked and shiny, like everything else about Leigh.

“I take it you’re former brotherhood?” Ingram asks.

“Former United States Soldier, ma'am. Just thawed out of the vault a few months ago. Can’t say I much like what you’ve done with the place.” Proctor Ingram folded her arms.

“It was your generation that dropped the bomb,” she said.

“It was the Chinese that dropped the bomb, ma’am, but I take your point. Let’s see if the United States can’t contribute a little more to the war effort.” He started to fiddle with something on the table: whatever it was, Proctor Ingram found it interesting enough to call someone over to watch. Before long, there was a group of people huddled around the table, all talking excitedly about a lot of technical stuff that MacCready couldn’t understand. MacCready had to stand on a chair to get a glimpse of Leigh: he was bent over the table, his face gleaming with the happiness of a man absorbed in the kind of work he liked best.

MacCready left him to it and went to search for valuables. There was a Nuka Cola Quantum in the space below decks: MacCready nabbed it and found a dark corner to sit and drink in. The ship was cold, large and uncomfortably military: yesterday MacCready would have thought that Leigh would hate it. Today he wasn’t sure. Leigh had known what he was doing with the suits, genuinely known, and he hadn’t sounded like he was lying to Elder Maxson. When MacCready was younger, he’d thought being a soldier was good, honest work. Then he’d joined the Gunners. Then he’d gone to Quincy.

It turned out being a soldier was more or less the same as being a mercenary, except that the people who were paying you genuinely thought they were buying you mind and body, and they expected you to think it too. For a few extra caps, they wanted you to fork over your free will! Do what you’re told, and if you don’t, it’s because you’re chicken, or stupid, or weak. The idea that the higher-ups could be wrong wasn’t even considered. That was what pissed MacCready off, more than the people at the top treating the people at the bottom like shit: that the people at the bottom allowed it, encouraged it! Like Danse and all his brainwashed brothers with their stupid, useless desire to die for the cause. The cause didn’t give a fuck! No one did! The only person that cared whether you lived or died was you and maybe one guy in your unit if you were lucky.

The army was shit, and MacCready had no idea how it had ever produced someone like Leigh. Maybe the army before the bombs had been different: maybe the officers had really cared for their men back then. Leigh had been an officer: that was easy enough to imagine. Hell, MacCready let him call the shots, because it was easy to listen to Leigh. But Leigh wasn’t like Barnes or Winlock: he’d come for MacCready when he’d let himself get captured like an idiot, and he didn’t treat MacCready like he was just a gun with a body attached.  

The ship was cold, and it whistled and shook with the shifting wind and docking Vertibirds. A rush of hate struck MacCready like a bullet: hate for the steels walls, hate for the cold-eyed soldiers with their endless patrols and thirst for martyrdom, hatred for Danse, for calling Leigh here, and for Leigh, for going. He chugged down the rest of the Nuka Cola, then tossed the bottle in the corner and went to look for Leigh. Some idiot had left a fat man lying out where anyone could steal it: MacCready took them up on the implicit dare.

 

Leigh was still in Proctor Ingram’s workshop, but he’d retreated from the busy central table to work on a suit stationed at the side.

“Going full Brotherhood?” MacCready asked, voice low.

“I was thinking of giving you this one.’ Leigh said, and all the anger left MacCready in a startled rush. Leigh smirked at the stunned expression on MacCready’s face and wiggled his eyebrows. “Unless you don’t want it?”

“Haha, uh, wow. I don’t know what I’d do with it. Do you have a locker here somewhere, by the way?”

“What did you find?” Leigh said, and he sounded delighted. MacCready felt a little flutter of warmth in his stomach, a sensation somewhere between love and a shot of vodka on an empty stomach.

“I can’t exactly pull it out here. The brotherhood might object.”

“Mmm,” said Leigh, and let MacCready pull him up. “Why don’t we go somewhere you can show me, then?”

Despite Leigh’s teasing tone, he took them a footlocker in the middle of a boardwalk, where anyone might walk by. MacCready waited for him to give the all-clear and open up his locker before putting away the fat man and associated mini-nukes. It gave him an odd little tingle to look at the weapons: they were easily worth twice as much as he’d charged for a month’s worth of mercenary work. Twice the cost of his life, and the Brotherhood treated them like toys.

“I hope no one saw you take these,” Leigh muttered and closed the door.

“As if.” Leigh glanced over his shoulder and kissed MacCready, warm and heavy, his back up against the locker. Leigh’s mouth was soft and warm, and he smelled like engine oil and sweat and something else that was just Leigh. MacCready wanted him, not just in the way he wanted to fuck, but in the way he wanted Duncan to be healthy.

Footsteps in the corridor. Leigh leaned on the locker, holding it shut with his forearm, and took a fork out of his pocket.

“Hello, Leigh… MacCreasy. What are you doing?” MacCready was going to spit in Danse’s power armor the next opportunity he got. Leigh reached into his pocket and pulled out a fork, then turned to Danse and said, blank-faced, that he was teaching MacCready how to build a turret out of cutlery. It took every ounce of MacCready’s concentration not to laugh.

“Have you ever built a turret, Danse? I think it’s a useful skill for soldiers to know how raiders construct their defenses. Knowing the correct range of a turret’s sensors can determine the success of an operation. Do you know the difference between a Mk.1 and a Mk 5 turret, Danse?” Danse looked faintly bewildered. MacCready stifled a snigger with a cough.

“I’m afraid I haven’t been educated on the matter. I’m afraid I haven’t got the time now, however. I would like to remind you that dinner is in an hour, in case you want to go take a shower.”

“There are showers?” Leigh said, a strange gleam in his eye.

“They’re on the officer deck. As a Knight, you have access between now and nine.”

“I could use a good shower,” Leigh said. “How do I get in?”

“I can show you, but I’m afraid your companion can’t come,” Danse said, frowning at MacCready.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t want to come,” Leigh said pleasantly. He and Danse went down the hall, Leigh gesturing for MacCready to follow them with a hand behind his back. MacCready followed at a distance, trying to look like he knew exactly where he was going and didn’t want to be bothered. There was a dicey moment when Danse turned around and started to come back the same way he’d arrived, but MacCready hid behind a bunch of crates. It really was like an ant hive: once you were inside, the drones ignored you. MacCready headed up the stairs once the coast was clear. Leigh already had the door open and was gesturing for MacCready to hurry up.

The knights’ bathroom was thin and cramped, the stalls narrow and set off by plastic curtains. Baths had always seemed like an incredibly luxury in the wasteland, a waste of drinkable water, but this didn’t look like luxury. It looked like a barracks. Leigh dragged them to a stall and closed the door.

“Ad Victoriam! Well, what are you waiting for? Clothes off.” He kissed MacCready, his hands already undoing the buttons on MacCready’s belt.

It was the best shower of MacCready’s life.

 

Afterwards, they went down to the mess hall, MacCready a little unsteady with happiness, and ate shitty, overpriced rations. Halfway through the food, MacCready went to retrieve a bottle of wine from Leigh’s power armor: when he returned, Danse was talking to Leigh. MacCready scowled and sat down on Leigh’s other side.

“You’re an angel,” Leigh said, and took a swig of the whiskey. “Where does the Brotherhood get these supplies from? Have you considered Mirelurk farming or something similar? In the hands of settlers it would be a disaster, but I think you have the tech to make it happen.”

“We get our supplies from settlements in the Capital Wasteland,” said Danse. Leigh put his hand on MacCready’s knee under the table and squeezed it gently, but he didn’t say anything.

“What all is in the Capital Wasteland?” Leigh asked, and handed MacCready the wine bottle. MacCready huffed and leaned back in his chair. Danse began to talk, describing Rivet City, Megaton, the water purifier. He left out the farms, the endless rows of corn where people worked on the farms while armed Brotherhood guards watched them, the seedy bars and battlefields where people went to die.

“It was a vault dweller like you who helped the Brotherhood take the water purifier from the enclave. She left the Brotherhood after the death of Sarah Lyons, and we never found out what happened to her.”

“She’s probably fine,” MacCready said, thinking of the woman who had come into Little Lamplight with pistol on her hip and a brotherhood Paladin trailing at her heels. “She was a tough lady. What happened to Paladin Cross? Did they break up or something?” Danse stared at him.

“You met her?”

“She came through the town where I lived once,” MacCready said shortly. “I was pretty small at the time, but I remember her vault suit and her dog.” He’d been a bossy little shit, but she’d been polite, even played tag with a few of the younger kids.

“Paladin Cross left the brotherhood with her after concerns about Cross’s enhancements.” Danse said stiffly. MacCready barked out a laugh.

“You mean the fact that she was more robot than human, I assume? Typical. Those two were the best the Brotherhood had to offer and you threw them away for nothing.”

“I don’t accept criticism from jumped up little mercenaries.” Leigh leaned in between the two of them, breaking MacCready’s eye contact with Danse.

“Let’s save the fire for the battlefield, shall we? Danse, where am I bunking tonight?”

“You have a bed over by your locker,” Danse said, with a slight emphasis on the you. He rose, thanked the Leigh for the conversation and walked off with the wine bottle.

“Hey,” said MacCready, but Leigh pulled him back into his seat.

“I told him he could have it,” he said softly. “Leave it alone, MacCready.”

 

Leigh’s bed was a mattress on spindly legs surrounded by rows of other beds, but when Leigh saw it he smirked. There was a moment of disorientation, and then MacCready hit the mattress with a thump.

“Did you just suplex me into the bed?” MacCready said incredulously.  

“Yep,” said Leigh, and flopped into the bed next to him. One arm went around MacCready's waist, the other under his neck. Leigh scooted closer, until MacCready could feel his breath on the back of his neck. MacCready had slept with other people before, but it had been professional, impersonal, a bunch of gunners all crammed together without enough beds. This felt different. It felt like Lucy coming home and resting her head on his his shoulder, warm, unbearably close.  

“I don’t think this is Brotherhood procedure,” MacCready muttered, because he wasn’t going to trade sweet nothings with Leigh with an annoyed brotherhood scribe not five feet away trying to sleep.

“Too bad,” Leigh said comfortably, his breath hot on MacCready’s neck.

“Danse will probably find us like this in the morning,” MacCready said, and felt annoyed with himself for having said it. There was something weird about the way Leigh belonged among the brotherhood soldiers, something more than just the fact that he’d been an army man. Leigh and the brotherhood had something in common that MacCready didn’t, although Maccready wasn’t sure what it was. He kept expecting Leigh to agree when the Brotherhood members said something disparaging about him, but Leigh never did.

“Why do you hate the Brotherhood so much?” Leigh asked quietly.

“They hate me,” MacCready said on automatic, although that wasn’t all of it. “They pretend they’re doing something important. Restoring the commonwealth. But actually, they’re just following orders from their officers, and the officers are crazy. You heard Elder Maxson. He gave that fancy speech about synths, but what’s he actually going to do? Destroy a bunch of buildings and use his power to bully people into working for him. He’s no better than the people who dropped the bomb.”

“I’m surprised you ever ran with the Gunners.” Leigh voice was very calm and even, probably trying to get MacCready to calm down. MacCready sighed and covered Leigh’s hand with his own. It was a long time before he could make himself speak.

“It may not seem like it, but being alone scares the heck out me,” he said quietly, half hoping that Leigh was asleep and wouldn’t hear. “I’m so glad I found you.” The arm around MacCready’s waist tightened and MacCready felt the ghost of a kiss on the back of his neck and then Leigh was silent. Even through the coat, he could feel the long line of Leigh’s body against his back, a warm, pleasant weight, new and familiar, as if Leigh had been designed specifically to fit against MacCready’s body. It was the warmest MacCready had been in weeks, the kind of warmth that settled into your bones and made you sleepy and stupid.

A final thought before bed: if MacCready was happy here, on the Brotherhood flagship, just because of Leigh, it was possible that he would be happy anywhere. It was possible that he would follow Leigh anywhere, and be happy to do so. There was a word for this, but MacCready was tired and he fell asleep before he could remember what it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -I'm quite fond of the Brotherhood of Steel! But MacCready isn't. Honestly, I think he wants you kill Danse when you find out that he's a synth because he hates Danse, not synths.  
> \- Aaand we're back to MacCready POV. We'll probably stay here for a while.  
> \- Deacon cameo! Leigh has a great eye for other spies. We'll be getting back to him when we visit the Railroad. 
> 
> Next chapter: Goodneighbor, lies, "You have a son?"


	6. cold days in hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There’s a Chinese submarine in the river not far from here,” MacCready said, remembering gossip he’d heard at the Green Shamrock. “Maybe there would be some information there.”  
> “What?” said Leigh.  
> “A Chinese submarine. It’s just off the coast, near the Green Shamrock.” MacCready had gone to the bar and gotten hammered after a particularly bad mission, then sat outside and watched the ocean. The top part of the submarine had become visible in the low tide, and MacCready had dared one of the other Gunners to swim across. Devin had been a great swimmer- he’d made it easily across and back, laughing about some old ghoul who wanted help with his ship. Leigh’s face turned grey when he heard that there was a living ghoul on the ship.  
> “It’s just a ghoul,” MacCready said. Leigh looked at him blankly, as though MacCready had stopped speaking English in favor of some entirely new language, and then shook his head.  
> “Show me."

The sound of heavy footsteps woke MacCready the next morning. Next to him, Leigh stirred sleepily, his eyelashes fluttering against the back of MacCready’s neck as he blinked himself awake.

Leigh had a knife sheath in his coat sleeve: he flicked the knife into his hand and jabbed the point into the side of MacCready’s neck.

“Who are you?” he asked in a voice heavy with sleep. Leigh’s arm was clamped over MacCready, pinning his arm to his side. Fighting would be suicide, so he forced himself to go limp despite the intolerable prick of the knife cutting into his neck.

“It’s me, MacCready,” MacCready said, trying to speak without moving his jaw. “We’re on the Prydwen.” A long moment of silence. MacCready was bleeding slightly: he could feel a drop sliding down his throat. It itched. His body was trembling with the desire to move, to go for the gun in his jacket, but he forced himself to hold.

A soft click, and the pain in the side of his neck vanished. MacCready lifted his hand slowly and rubbed at the blood on the side of his neck.

“God and fucking country,” Leigh said, in a low whisper. “I'm so fucking sorry. It’s the damn barracks... I thought I was back in Canada and the reds had made it past the front lines.”

“You can buy me a new scarf, you maniac,” MacCready muttered.

“Of course,” Leigh said, and kissed the side of MacCready’s neck. Someone coughed at the foot of the bed. Paladin Danse.

“MacCready, a word,” he said softly. MacCready scowled at him and extracted himself regretfully from Leigh’s warm arms, then followed Danse into the corridor.

“Whatever you want, it better be worth almost getting knifed for,” MacCready informed him.

“I’m not responsible for your sleeping arrangements,” Danse said stiffly.

“Bullshit. You don’t have a single other bed, or even a sleeping bag? You wanted me to sleep on the ground, because you don’t think wasteland trash like me deserves a bed.”

“I’ve slept on the ground for plenty of ops,” Danse said coldly. “What is Leigh paying you, mercenary?” Ah. Danse was going to try and bribe him to leave.

“500 caps and ten percent of everything we loot,” MacCready lied. When Danse tried to bargain him down, he was going to laugh in his face and go back to bed, and fuck Danse if he tried to drag out the conversation. MacCready had lost enough time on this bullshit ship.

“Even though the two of you are together?” That was a weird line of questioning, even if Leigh hadn’t exactly been subtle about cuddling MacCready like a kid with a teddy bear.

“We weren’t together when we met, and I just kept the caps. What do you want, Danse?”

“I want to know if you’re a danger to him.”

“Just because everyone you meet hates you, don’t assume Leigh is the same way. I’ll bet you I’m a better shot than you are. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let anything happen to Leigh.” Danse gave MacCready an icy look, and then he smiled.

“The shooting range is on the roof. I’ll meet you there. Bring your rifle.”

 

The wind on top of the Prydwen cut straight through MacCready’s battered coat. He fished a pair of gloves from an inner pocket and blew irritably on his hands. Danse, of course, was in his power armor. Worse for him: he had to rely on his suit to stabilize his hands.

Danse was less shit than MacCready had hoped: he managed to match MacCready’s shooting all the way up to 1000 meters of distance before handing his gun to one of the people who had come to watch.

“I didn’t realize I had to fight the whole Brotherhood,” MacCready muttered, irritated at the thought of all the ammo he was wasting. The Brotherhood probably didn’t care; they probably had an ammunition factory staffed by miserable wastelanders somewhere. His new opponent was a short woman with an undercut and a nasty scar on her face: MacCready was willing to bet she’d never had to ask herself whether she needed ammo or food more. Still, he was doing well with caps, and the allure of humiliating the Brotherhood on their own flagship was incredibly powerful.

The contest dragged on. They moved the targets to 1250 meters, then to 1500. At 1750 both of them stopped being able to hit because of the wind. The targets were no longer on the Prydwen: they were silhouettes attached to a radio tower on the ground. The rest of the range had gathered around: they were heckling the soldier who was shooting against him.

MacCready brought the gun to his shoulder and breathed in. The wind stopped, the Prydwen quit trembling, and for a single instant light and wind aligned to make a perfect shot. MacCready knew as soon as he squeezed off the trigger that he’d won. A groan rose from the soldiers around them, but the woman who’d been shooting against him held out her hand. They shook.

“You’re a damn good shot. You must have started young. Six or so? Helping Dad around the farm?”

“Something like that,” said MacCready. She nodded.

“I’m pretty good, but I started late. There’s three guys that can beat me back in the Capital and they all grew up shooting. What’s the balance like on that thing?” MacCready handed her the rifle and watched her lift it and stare through the scope.

“Nice,” she said at last, and turned to the soldiers who were gawking. “Quit gawking, you damn scrubs. You think the Brotherhood’s the only show in town? Think again! Get back to your posts. You, you can come with me. That shot deserves a drink.”

“Paladin Tserkva…” Danse said.

“You can buy him the first one,” she informed him. They went down to the officer’s mess. Tserkva ordered them whiskey and told MacCready about herself. She was from the Capital Wasteland. Super Mutants had killed everyone in her settlement but she’d survived by hiding in a safe while the mutants dragged the other settlers out and executed them one by one.

“Had to hold my damn nose on. After that, I went straight to the brotherhood. No one else was doing anything useful. Haven’t looked back since. You should think about joining. For starters, you’d get a better rifle.” Danse made a strangled noise.

“I tried being military for a bit. It’s not really my thing. I think the fancy word is ‘insubordinate’, but thanks for the offer.”

“Suit yourself,” said Tserkva. “Huh. Looks like your ride is here.” MacCready turned. Leigh had come into the room, his hair still sticking up from the pillow.

“Oh, thank god,” he said when he saw Danse and MacCready at the bar. Paladin Tserkva laughed.

“They’re both still alive... you’re welcome. Good luck with the fort run, and ad victoriam.” She hopped off her barstool and left. Leigh raised an eyebrow.

“Who was that?”

“The second-best sniper on the Prydwen.”

 

Leigh seemed to be worried about MacCready and Danse inhabiting the same space, because he immediately hustled Danse onto a vertibird and flew off. MacCready left him to it. He sold one of the stolen nukes back to the Quartermaster and bought himself some a pack of good cigarettes and some beer, then headed back up to the shooting range to watch the little Initiates try to shoot. His time in little Lamplight had left him with a liking for high places. More than one dangerous night in the Wasteland had found him up a tree in a rudimentary sniper’s nest.

Paladin Tservka caught sight of him and gave him a nod, but they didn’t speak. There was nothing to say. The Commonwealth was safely a bullet away, cold and clear under the gleam of the fully ascended sun. Slowly, creeping through the stillness and the rush of the wind, peace descended on MacCready and he slipped into the peculiar stillness common to all good snipers. His thoughts slowed. He forgot that he was numb. There was nothing but the commonwealth, defenselessly spread out for all to see, and the wait.

Leigh appeared in the late afternoon, unrecognizable in a Brotherhood of Steel uniform and helmet. When he took off his hat, there was blood smeared across his forehead.

“Good mission?” MacCready asked.

“More nukes for the collection,” Leigh said, smiling crookedly. “You ready to go?”

They took a vertibird back to Cambridge. MacCready waited until the Vertibird was out of range and then ran for the nearest doorway.

“Come on, get out of your armor!” he yelled. Leigh climbed out and MacCready dragged him into the doorway.

“What is-” MacCready cut Leigh off with a kiss. “Hey-” he said, and MacCready kissed him again. “What-okay, fine,” he said, and yanked MacCready off his feet and kissed him hard against the wall. Leigh kissed him like he was hungry for it, like he’d been as desperate for MacCready’s warmth in the cold halls of the Prydwen as MacCready had been for him. When they finally pulled apart MacCready made a little displeased sound in his throat and Leigh kissed him again, open-mouthed and eager, until neither of them could breathe.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for hours,” MacCready admitted. Leigh was still holding him up, as though he weighed nothing. It was arousing: Leigh could do anything with MacCready, and MacCready would let him. One last kiss, and then Leigh put MacCready down.

“I’m sorry about your neck,” he said, his hand on MacCready’s collar. The nick from earlier had scabbed over- a small injury out of all the cuts MacCready’s ever had.

“I take payment in caps or beer,” MacCready said.

“Not in kisses?” Leigh touched the edge of MacCready’s neck softly, his face uncharacteristically serious. “I am sorry, though. I thought you were someone else, and then when you weren’t I had a bad reaction. It won’t happen again.” A pair of crows landed on the ground behind them. Leigh glanced over to see what MacCready was looking at and shot the birds with a quick one two of his pistol.

“Fucking spies.”

“Spies?” Leigh left the doorway and walked over to the bird, then flipped out his knife and slit the bird open. He took out a sparking wire and tossed it on the ground with a look of disgust.

“They’re not all Institute,” he said scornfully. “I wish I could say I spotted them on purpose, but I was trying to catch one to eat.” He headed back to MacCready and beckoned him back into the doorway. “I have a grudge against the Institute,” he said quietly. “I don’t really want to talk about it because you don’t know who’s listening, but it’ll be relevant when we get to Goodneighbor.”

“Goodneighbor?”

“I figured you might want to head somewhere more your speed after all the military discipline.” MacCready snorted.

“Is that why we went to the Brotherhood? To see if they could help you with it?” Leigh frowned, his face closed. He was trying to decide what to tell MacCready, and didn’t that just sting like a bloodbug. What had Leigh gotten himself into?

“Sort of,” Leigh said at last. “I mostly just wanted to get onto their flagship. The Brotherhood talks a good game about being against the Institute, but I’m not sure I want to join.” He laughed. “Honestly, it was kind of nice, being back in the service, but I can’t really take them seriously. They’re so excited about their little airship, like it makes them a power. During Anchorage we had so many ships going in and out that it blocked out the sun. And now Maxson wants to talk about the end of the world- like a couple of little robots are going to end the world! They’re not even out of the Commonwealth much.”  Leigh sounded a little sad. “The world’s over, whatever Maxson says. The Chinese won, or they lost. Everyone lost.”

“I’m sorry,” MacCready said awkwardly.

“For what? We knew what we were doing. We just didn’t think about… this.” He spread his arms, indicating the Commonwealth around them. “The whole world went to hell, and we don’t even know if the other side was hit just as bad as us, or what. God, I want to know so bad.”

“There’s a Chinese submarine in the river not far from here,” MacCready said, remembering gossip he’d heard at the Green Shamrock. “Maybe there would be some information there.”

“What?” said Leigh.

“A Chinese submarine,” MacCready said slowly. Leigh’s face had gone oddly flat. “It’s just off the coast, near the Green Shamrock.” MacCready had gone to the bar with the Gunners and gotten hammered after a particularly bad mission, then sat outside and watched the ocean. The top part of the submarine had become visible in the low tide, and MacCready had dared one of the other Gunners to swim across. Devin had been a great swimmer- he’d made it easily across and back, laughing about some old ghoul who wanted help with his ship. He’d died via super mutant two missions later, and MacCready had never made it back to the bar. Leigh’s face turned grey when he heard that there was a living ghoul on the ship.

“It’s just a ghoul,” MacCready said. Leigh looked at him blankly, as though MacCready had stopped speaking English in favor of some entirely new language, and then shook his head.

“Show me,” he said.

 

The submarine was just off the coast. MacCready, who had hated water ever since one of the Little Lamplighters had fallen into the pools in the cavern and died, did not want to go in the ocean, but Leigh slipped him some Rad-X, lifted him onto the top of his suit and went.

The ocean was cold and despite the height of the power armor MacCready’s legs were soon soaked and numb. It was impossible to feel radiation, but that didn’t stop MacCready from fancying that he could feel it- a tingle, a last send off from his nerves before they dissolved completely. He clambered onto the submarine and miserably wrung out the hem of his coat.

“Is that thing waterproof?”

“You betcha,” Leigh replied, completely unphased by MacCready’s obvious misery.

“Let’s get this over with,” MacCready grumbled, and down they went.

The inside of the submarine was claustrophobic and freezing, the underwater twin of the Prydwen. The submarine swayed with each clanging step of Leigh’s boots, and the air was thick with dust and the smell of things dying in inches.

Leigh raised a big hand. MacCready had just enough time to wonder what he was going to do before he knocked on the wall with a deafening boom. Silence in the dusty ship, the sound fading into the distance, and then Leigh yelled something MacCready didn’t understand.

He lifted his scarf over his mouth and nose just as an answering yell came back into the hallway. Leigh’s face lit up and he took his helmet off and charged into the room the yell had come from. MacCready trailed after, still sneezing, and found Leigh conversing enthusiastically with an ancient ghoul in a faded military uniform. It was- whatever they were speaking, it wasn’t english.

Chinese? Leigh climbed out of his power armor and shook the ghoul’s hand. He began to speak animatedly in- Chinese? It had to be Chinese- with the ghoul, who answered in the same language. Leigh’s face was gleaming, his speech stuttering with enthusiasm, like he couldn’t believe his sheer joy in meeting this old, rotting man with dust in the fold of his face. MacCready wondered if they’d known each other before the war.

The ghoul hadn’t put much effort into maintaining his quarters, and after a while MacCready stopped caring very much about anything but his desire for a tissue. He was rifling through his pack for something to blow his nose in when Leigh froze, took a halting step backwards and bolted from the room.

“What?” said MacCready, and tried to follow, but the ghoul blocked him. He raised his rifle, but the ghoul was unmoved.

“He heared some very bad news,” the ghoul said. “Leave him alone for now. Sit down, have a cigarette.” MacCready wavered, then slowly lowered his rifle.

“What did you tell him?”

“China destroyed by the bombs. No message from Zhonguo in 200 years. No people looking for us.” It was difficult to tell the ghoul’s facial expression in the dim light, but MacCready thought the expression on the ghoul’s face was pity. “Li not have long time to accept this new world, like me.”

“Why does he care?” MacCready asked. The ghoul gave him a small, one shouldered shrug.

“Ask Li yourself,” he said. For a hot moment MacCready was on the verge of raising his gun and shooting the ghoul in the face. The moment passed, and he left the cabin.

Leigh was on the top of the submarine, staring east into the darkening horizon. He didn’t say anything when MacCready came out, or move. A breeze was rising off the ocean, filling the air with the cold, sharp smell of the ocean. MacCready tried to speak, but each time the words died in his throat, choked by the silence and cold. Tell me what it is, he pleaded silently, but Leigh didn’t even seem to know he was there, although MacCready knew perfectly well he’d heard the hatch open. A single sound in the silence: a muffled sob. MacCready swallowed, opened his mouth, and then went back into the submarine.

“I’m Captain Zao,” the ghoul said when he came back in. “What is land like? America.”

“We call it the Commonwealth these days,” MacCready said, and began to talk gratefully about the city, the super mutants, the vertibirds. Zao was a good listener, and he seemed oddly well informed for someone who had spent 200 years on a submarine.

“Why didn’t you ever go to the mainland?” MacCready asked in a lull in the conversation. Zhao inhaled sharply.

“At first we were not close enough to land. And then it was… how do you say? A habit. Besides, it was a long time asleep after the bombs. And I not want to leave my crew.”

“Your crew?”

“All crazy now,” Zao said. “Radiation leak.” There was a lull, and in the silence MacCready heard the clang of the hatch opening. Even in the dim light of the submarine, MacCready could see that Leigh’s eyes were red when he came back into the cabin.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice casual and light, as though he’d just stepped out to take a piss. MacCready didn’t say anything, just shrugged. If Leigh wanted to tell him, he would. It ached, to step back and pretend that Leigh was just another soldier in the same squad, one more body with a tragedy attached, but everything hurt sooner or later in the Commonwealth.

“Was that Chinese?” he asked.

“It was,” Leigh said, and licked his lips. He had lied to MacCready about this- lied flagrantly and enthusiastically, so that MacCready remembered it for the vehemence of the reaction.

“Cool,” he said.

“Right,” said Leigh. “Cool.” He sounded like MacCready had punched him in the face. He turned to Zao and spoke. They exchanged a few sentences, and then Leigh walked over to his suit of power armor, a strange look on his face.

“Come on, MacCready. We’re going to clean out the rest of the ship, give these poor bastards the burial they should have gotten years ago.”

 

They went down into the belly of the submarine, the cold beating in on them from every angle. Leigh’s suit was loud in the skeletal silence, each hiss and beep making the hair on the back of MacCready’s neck stand up. The place was a tomb. When Leigh walked, the ship shook with the thunder of his footsteps. A low, long hiss, and then the ghouls were on them.

Two- no- three, clawing at Leigh, one of them latched onto his arm, one clawing at his helmet. A mass of bony hands and arms, pitted skin, limbs that lashed out. MacCready tried to fire, but the corridor was wide and as Leigh’s armor prevented the ghouls from passing him, it also prevented MacCready from getting a decent shot. He retreated a few steps and pulled himself quickly up the ladder.

The scene below was like a replay of his worst nightmares, the rifle in his hand heavy and dead like Duncan crying in his arms. The ghouls had flooded into the corridor, and in the press of bodies Leigh couldn’t get his gun out. He was trying to beat them off his gun arm, but there were too many--- soon, the armor would lose the ability to shield at all, and then Leigh’s arms would slow and stop moving and vanish in the tide of ferals…

“Not this time,” MacCready said, and began to fire. The long years of a habit saved him: he was able to lift, and fire, and shoot, and move mechanically to the next face, to the next flailing limb, until the mass of slashing, howling flesh was nothing but a single feral slashing one-armed at Leigh’s front. MacCready reloaded mechanically and shot, and then it was silent.

“Leigh,” MacCready said, and hurried down the ladder.

“MacCready,” Leigh said, as though he were saying a stranger’s name. “You’re bleeding.” This was beyond the pale.

“You almost died! “You didn’t- you didn’t even get off a shot. Your armor is beeping.” It was beeping, the cheerful flames Leigh had painted on scratched by the scrabbling fingernails of the ferals- but it wasn’t nearly as bad as MacCready had feared. He felt suddenly ridiculous. His arm was bleeding in sluggish gouts of blood. One of the ferals must have clawed him in the surprised moment when they’d first appeared.

“You were yelling,” Leigh said dimly.

“I don’t like ferals,” MacCready said, and forced himself to swallow despite the sick feeling in his throat.

“Do you want my armor?” Leigh asked, and didn’t that feel like hell. MacCready could just imagine it- Leigh in his tux, still insisting on going first, and MacCready clumsy and indefensibly safe, trying to move his clumsy arms to shoot while Leigh was torn apart in front of him. Leigh’s blood splattered on the front of the power armor’s visor.

“No thank you,” MacCready said, his voice breaking. “Could you- could you take a stimpack? Please?” Leigh lifted his hand slowly to the button on the front of his armor that auto-dispensed stimpacks and MacCready, at the end of his patience, jammed his thumb down. There was a faint hiss and Leigh’s armor stopped beeping.

They cleaned out the ship. MacCready knew, even as he lifted his gun and fired on the second set of ghouls swarming Leigh, that he was doing the hardest work he’d ever done. Nothing could be worse. Something inside his head was screaming, something worse than pain, worse than hunger, worse than fear. Memory, perhaps. A lifetime of enduring saved him: his shot stayed on target, every time, drilling into rotted heads and between blackened teeth, but when he wasn’t shooting his hands trembled wildly. They reached the reactor and Leigh climbed out of his suit and began to fiddle with some wires. MacCready watched the door, his rifle ready. A quiet moan rattled down the corridor. He raised his gun and watched, waiting for the feral to come lurching out of a doorway, and then the smell of old meat, and teeth sinking into his shoulder.

MacCready screamed and brought the gun back. He jammed the butt of his rifle into the ghoul’s side, striking over and over, then slammed the thing into the wall. The horrible mouth let go and MacCready turned, getting the gun between him and the ghoul, and kicked the horrible thing in the side of the knee. A snap, and the ghoul went down. MacCready struck it in the forehead with the butt of his rifle- once, twice, again. It moved! MacCready brought the gun down, making the ribs crack, the spine arch. His heart was pounding, his hand shaking. He would break every bone and the disgusting thing would never rise again to touch anyone he loved.

Strong arms pinned his arms to his side and lifted him away from the ghoul, then set him down.

“I think it’s dead,” Leigh said. Blood and thicker things were caked along MacCready’s arms. He looked at his arms, and then back to Leigh, steam rising off his bloody hands in the cold of the ship.

“I really hate ghouls,” he managed.

“I see that,” Leigh said.

 

They went back to Zao. While Leigh talked to him, MacCready went topside and tried to clean the gore off his hands and arms. There was something thick splattered across the front of his coat: he washed his hands over and over and breathed resolutely through his nose. When Leigh came up through the hatch, he was still scrubbing at his coat with numb, clumsy hands.

They looked at each other a moment, and then Leigh walked into the ocean and paused to let MacCready clamber onto his shoulders. There was no chatter on the way back to the shore. They walked towards Goodneighbor in silence, MacCready shivering in his damp coat. 

“So, what was that?” Leigh asked as they crossed the bridge. MacCready looked at him incredulously, almost too tired to summon up the energy to reply.

“I could ask you the same,” he said.

“I learned Chinese in the service,” Leigh said quietly. “I used to work in counterintelligence, and they taught us not to talk about it. It’s a habit.”

“Bullshit,” said MacCready. It came out half-hearted. MacCready was too exhausted to be really angry.

“What?”

“Bullshit. I know you’re lying to me, and I don’t give a shit. I don’t need to know everything about you to know that I want to be your partner. But just because I’m not constantly calling you on your bullshit doesn’t mean I believe all of it, either.” Leigh froze and then turned slowly towards MacCready, His hand twitched towards his rifle. It was impossible, ridiculous, that Leigh should be considering shooting MacCready, but it was true.

“How did you ever survive so long out here?” Leigh asked, and he sounded genuinely puzzled. “You don’t have the faintest idea how to bluff.”

“Usually I wasn’t bluffing,” MacCready said, remembering all the time he’d shot someone from behind the barricade at Little Lamplight. No one had believed a child would pull the trigger until he’d done it. The first time MacCready hadn’t believed it either. Maybe death was always like that- a surprise. If Leigh shot him MacCready would be surprised. Not because he’d been shot, but because for the first time in his life he hadn’t been able to make himself fire back. How had he come here?

“Well, that’s your problem,” Leigh said.

“No,” said MacCready. His throat ached with the words, but he forced them out. “My problem is that you were bluffing, always.” He reached into his thigh pocket and Leigh watched his hands as he brought out the cigarette with shaking hands and lit it. Leigh was watching to see if he was going for his gun. He was going to die. The cigarette glowed at last and MacCready lifted it to his mouth and took a long drag. If he stepped forward, he’d get shot in the back, but if he took his eyes off Leigh’s hands, he’d get shot from the front. Leigh was absolutely the type to make eye contact and shoot while you were looking at his face. MacCready had seen him do it. He exhaled, blowing the smoke in Leigh’s face.

“I have a son,” he said offhandedly. “Duncan. If anything ever happened to me, would you send my things to him?”

“ _You_ have a son?”

“He’s four,” MacCready said, thinking of the little cottage, the glass windows MacCready had paid through the nose to put in, the sickbed smell of the room.

“Why isn’t he with you?”

“He’s sick,” MacCready said quietly. “I was looking for a cure.” Leigh ripped off his helmet and stared at him, disbelief plastered all over his face. Leigh’s glare was like a spotlight: he was searching MacCready’s face for something, although MacCready couldn’t think what.

“Are you serious?” he demanded, and then he began to laugh. It was cold, broken, almost hysterical. He threw his helmet on the ground, then climbed out of his armor and swept MacCready into a tight embrace. MacCready stood there, numb, as tears soaked into his scarf, then shoved Leigh off of him.

“What is wrong with you?” Leigh started to laugh, but his face was twisted.

“We destroyed the world,” he said. “Me, Zao, the other spies. We ruined it! And for what? Did you know? Do you know who I am?”

“No,” said MacCready. “I don’t care about that.” Leigh’s face twisted. He took a step forward, like he was going to try and grab MacCready again, and MacCready took a step back.

“Everything about you makes me feel like you were made for me,” Leigh said. “I had a wife, before the war. She was sick. And then the Institute shot her.” He paused and shook his head. “It makes me wonder if they sent you. I can’t think of someone more perfect for me- a dead wife, a lost son. Exactly the same. Completely different.”

“I don’t give a fuck about that,” MacCready repeated. He could barely hear his own voice over the sick roaring in his ears.

“You’re perfect,” Leigh said. “If you are from the Institute, you win. I’m done. I’m tired of giving things up for the cause.”

MacCready punched him in the face. He hadn’t known he was going to do it until his knuckles connected. Leigh staggered and fell, a bewildered expression on his face.

“I’m not a synth, you stupid fucker!” MacCready screamed. “You were going to shoot me! I don’t give a FUCK if you were a spy! I didn’t make up Lucy and Duncan for you! They’re real. Lucy was real, she was my wife. I went into that submarine with you. I shot those ghouls but I thought- I thought you were going to die!” He thought about Leigh, barely struggling in the corridor, they way he’d barely gone for his gun. “I would have died down there with you. If you- if you had gone like Lucy I would have eaten my own fucking gun, and you, you weren’t even thinking about me at all.” MacCready’s throat ached.

“Baby,” Leigh said, and it sounded more like him than he’d sounded since boarding the sub.

“I’m going back to Goodneighbor,” MacCready said. “You can go back to the Brotherhood, or you can shoot me in the back. I don’t give a fuck. If I see you coming from a distance I can’t promise I won’t take my shot, though, so here’s your chance.” He turned and walked down the street, the shadows of evening growing behind him, his steps echoing in the dead silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ANNOUNCEMENT (2/11): Chapter 4 has been rewritten to be from MacCready's POV, for consistency. It's got some new content with Cait and MacCready, so I suggest everyone check it out. The old Chapter 4 is up as a separate work titled "Safe Distance" and Shot Through the Head is now part of a series. Expect more spin off works in the future.
> 
> \- I had not realized there was a Chinese submarine with a living Chinese ghoul on it until I read the wiki. I could not have made a mission more guaranteed to make both Leigh and MacCready flip their shit if I'd been designing the game myself. (If this were a Bioware game, this would be the mission where Leigh leaves your party and sails for China if you haven't got his approval high enough.)  
> \- Based on his high-approval perk, I assume MacCready is a really good sniper. 
> 
> Next Chapter: Cait, back-alleys, bad decisions.


	7. trust don't come easy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few more hours of sleep, and then the realization that there was a note from Leigh tucked in with the water and packet of Med-X. Leigh wrote like a typewriter, straight and easy to read. “I’m sorry. Meet me at the Hotel Rexford if you want to talk. I’ll be in town Monday. If you shoot, shoot straight."

Goodneighbor was a town made for nighttime. The signs that looked garish and dull in the day were a gleaming beacon in the night, when the streets filled with jittery, fast-talking junkies and loud drunks. MacCready saw it long before he could hear it- the only glow for miles in the silent desolation of the ruined city. He scraped together the last of his strength and walked faster. 

His back ached. His heart ached. There was a permanent itch between his shoulder blades, as though any moment a bullet was going to come tearing through his coat, but he’d looked back several times and there was no one behind him. 

He walked through the gate into the usual party scene- people laughing and drinking in little knots, eyeing up other people to fuck or to fight or both. Tired as he was, he’d never be able to sleep through this noise, but he didn’t want to go back to the Third Rail. Too easy for someone to find him. He mentioned this to Daisy, who suggested one of the old triggerman hideouts and touched his forehead in concern. 

“You’re burning up.”

“Don’t worry about me, Daisy. I’ve had worse.” He hadn’t, not since Lucy died, but there was no reason to worry Daisy. Wasn’t shit she could do, anyway. He said goodbye and headed to the triggerman hideout, which opened with the lightest tap of the screwdriver. Click. The triggermen hadn’t spent enough money on their locks, the tight bastards. MacCready found a small corner and a relatively unstained mattress and plunged into a deep, feverish sleep. Somewhere, Duncan was enduring the same thing, but worse, because he’d been doing it for so long he wouldn’t be able to remember anything else. At that age, your memory only lasted a few weeks at best, and Duncan had been dying in inches for almost a year.

It was a few days before anyone came for him. When he slept, his dreams were filled with ghouls in the uniforms of dead countries and languages he couldn’t speak. He dreamed of China, although he’d never been there. He only knew that it was China, and the bombs had made it as flat as the rest of the world, nothing but a hole crackling with radiation and ghouls. Sometimes he couldn’t sleep, and that was even worse. Lying on his pile of mattresses, his mind circled helplessly through the confrontation on the bridge over and over like some sick movie. Leigh had looked so surprised when MacCready punched him, his hand hovering over his jaw. 

It was- it was only a threat. MacCready got them all the time. But it wasn’t just a threat, because it was Leigh, and Leigh wasn’t just anyone. Leigh was- had been- MacCready’s partner. If it had just been a threat over money or guns or women MacCready could have stomached it, but for China? China was dead. No one in the whole damn commonwealth gave a single fuck about China except for Leigh and maybe a few old ghouls. 

MacCready rolled over in his bed resentfully and gave himself a small dose of a stimpack. He didn’t have many, so he was rationing them out. He forced himself to choke down some water and stale cakes, then closed his eyes and tried to sleep. What had happened had happened. The past was past, the present sucked, and the future would be worse if he didn’t stop wallowing and prepare. 

 

An explosion jerked MacCready from his fitful sleep. He scrambled for his pistol with sleep-dulled hands and clumsily reloaded the magazine, then peered over the top of the barricade. His fever had broken at some point, leaving him cold and clammy with sweat. He used one hand to grope for the ratty blanket he’d been using, keeping the other trained on the doorway. 

Silence in the old triggerman hideout. It occurred to MacCready that whoever it was had probably stepped on one of his mines. It might be a triggerman, or some random thug, or Daisy, come by to check. It could be Leigh. He ducked behind his barricade and crawled quietly to a hole in the floor and glanced downwards. 

Nick Valentine was staring a smoking hole in the floorboards and looking irritated. His gun wasn’t out. As MacCready watched, he gave an exasperated sigh, then took out a cigarette and lit it. 

“I know you’re here somewhere, kid. I just want to talk.” Stupidly, it hadn’t occurred to MacCready that Leigh might send someone else to find him. At least it was Nick. The old synth was plenty dangerous, but he wasn’t the type to shoot first and ask questions later.

“So talk,” MacCready yelled back. 

“I have some stuff for you. Gifts from Daisy, mostly. She didn’t squeal, so don’t get mad at her. And kid? Whatever Leigh did, it isn’t worth this kind of fight.”

“He’s a fucking spy, and he was going to shoot me for finding out,” MacCready yelled down. Nick would probably also end up on Leigh’s hit list if MacCready told him, but MacCready was too tired to care. If Nick wanted to avoid being mixed up in this, he shouldn’t have been playing messenger boy. 

“A spy?” Nick said, sounding genuinely interested for the first time in the conversation. “How do you figure?”

“I figure because he had some kind of fu- some kind of freaking breakdown and started yelling about how China was destroyed after we talked to some old ghoul.” Silence from below. MacCready peered back over the edge to see Valentine looking upwards at him quizzically.

“Why don't you come down here?” MacCready went, grabbing his mines on the way down. When he got to the bottom, Valentine was sitting on a ragged old sofa, smoke rising from the holes in his face. MacCready sat reluctantly next to him. 

“I’m sick,” he said in response to Valentine’s look. “Caught too much water riding out to that damn submarine. It’s just off the coast, near the the Green Shamrock. Leigh was asking about China, so I suggested it. I knew he could read chinese, but I didn’t think he was a spy. I mean, come on. That’s comic book stuff.” The cigarette smoke was making MacCready’s throat itch. He picked some water out of the bag Nick had brought and wrenched the cap off. 

“A spy from China, huh,” Valentine said as MacCready drank. “It does sound like a radio serial. You said he was going to shoot you?” Just thinking about it made MacCready feel sick. 

“I said that I knew he was lying and I didn’t care but I guess...I guess he didn’t believe me.”

“What happened then?” Valentine had a way of making you want to talk to him, like he could make all your problems go away if you just told him what was wrong. It made Maccready angry and dismayed all at once. 

“We argued. I told him about my family and he freaked out. Started yelling. So I punched him.” Nick made a little noise of recognition, like he’d seen Leigh’s injured face and wondered about it. Good. MacCready hoped Leigh had a black eye. 

“What was he saying?” Nick asked. 

“He was yelling some stupid shit, like he thought I was from the Institute, so I left. Like he’s the only person in the world with a dead wife. Hell, probably half the people in the Commonwealth have lost someone.” He thought about the kids he’d known growing up, each and every one of them completely alone in the world when they came to Little Lamplight. His face was beginning to feel hot and tight again. 

“You made the right call,” Nick said, and blew out a stream of smoke. “You should probably stay here, kid. I don’t think Leigh will come looking for you. If he asks, I’ll tell him you’re somewhere else. The Capital Wasteland, maybe.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t deserve to get shot for helping out a friend,” Nick said in a hard voice. It was strange. Nick sounded like he actually cared, even though he and MacCready were nothing but strangers to each other. He ought to draw his gun and shoot Nick before the synth could reveal his location to Leigh. And yet, he wasn’t really hiding, was he? He’d told Leigh exactly where to find him. It was like he wasn’t even trying not to die. 

“Hey,” Nick said gently. “Chin up, kid. It’ll work out.” 

“I doubt it,” MacCready said, but he took the cigarette and supplies Nick offered him. 

 

A few more hours of sleep, and then the realization that there was a note from Leigh tucked in with the water and packet of Med-X. Leigh wrote like a typewriter, straight and easy to read. 

“I’m sorry. Meet me at the Hotel Rexford if you want to talk. I’ll be in town Monday. If you shoot, shoot straight. ” MacCready had lost track of the time, but if he’d spent four days being sick it was probably Sunday. He bumped into Cait on his way to ask Daisy what day it was. 

“Ya look like shit,” she said and grabbed him in a tight hug. “I thought Leigh had killed ya’re dumb ass.” 

“Nope, still kicking. What are you doing here?”

“Came to look for ya, stupid. Leigh came into Diamond City with a black eye and looking like shit and barricaded himself in his fucking house and wouldn’t tell anyone what happened, so I figured I’d come ask you.”

“How’d you know where I would be?”

“Where else would ya be?” That was fair. MacCready smiled at her. Despite everything, there was at least one person in his corner. 

“What day is it?”

“Sunday, why?”

“Leigh invited me to a shoot-out tomorrow.” He showed her the note. 

“Well, normally I’d put me money on him in a close fight, but both of ya look like shit right now, so it’s hard ta judge. What the fuck happened?”

“Ghouls. I found out some dumb secret about him and he was thinking about killing me. It didn’t come to that, though. I told him about my son and he lost it, started yelling about synths.” Cait snorted and shook her head. 

“What’d ya find out? He brotherhood, or something?” If he told Cait, she’d be on Leigh’s hitlist too, but hell, she’d asked, and he didn’t owe Leigh anything. If Leigh asked, Cait could lie.

“He was a spy, pre-war. Stupid thing to get worked up about. Who gives a fuck about America or China these days?” Cait looked puzzled.

“That is dumb,” she agreed. MacCready gestured towards the bar and the two of them headed towards the third rail, still talking. “You going to go to his party?” she asked as they went through the door. 

“Sure,” MacCready said on the other side. “If I die, you can have my stuff. I’d appreciate it if you broke his fucking nose, but…” he shrugged to say that if he died it didn't really matter what happened either way. 

“Got it,” said Cait. “What you going to do if you don’t die?”

“Tell him to fuck himself and get some stuff for my son. That reminds me, how do you feel about ghouls?”

“Pip got me a new baseball bat with spikes,” she said. 

“Cool. How’s 200 caps sound to you? I have a place I need to get through.”

“Big spender,” said Cait, and clapped him on the shoulder. They were into the actual bar, the sounds of Magnolia’s voice lingering in the air. “Drinks are on me, then. I could stand to murder some ferals.”

 

MacCready woke early in the morning on Monday. When he went to the the front desk, there was a room waiting for him: 211, down the hall. The druggie salesman loitering in the lobby winked at him on his way up. MacCready didn’t wink back. 

It had been a long week, and MacCready still hadn’t fully recovered from the illness. After a few minutes, he sat down on the bed, took out some purified water and cram, and started working his way through the omics he’d stolen from the Brotherhood of Steel. 

Grognak was fighting a dinosaur when a knock came on the door. MacCready pointed his pistol at the door, stuffed the magazine under a pillow, and stood. 

“Come in.”

The person who opened the door resembled Leigh, but there was a slash running from forehead to eyebrow, and their eyes didn’t match. One of them was the same dark color as Leigh’s eyes, and one of them was a light-greenish brown. He was unarmed, but wearing a long sleeved coat which almost certainly contained hidden knives. 

“If you’re a synth, you’re not doing a very good job of hiding it,” MacCready said. Leigh looked surprised, and then he touched the scar on his forehead. 

“I had a run-in with the facial surgeon,” he said, and smiled. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Zero stars. The service is awful.”

“Can the chit-chat. What do you want, Leigh?” Leigh spread his hands. 

“I wanted to see you.” MacCready raised his pistol even with Leigh’s forehead and put his finger on the trigger.

“I suggest you find a less ambiguous way to answer my question.”

“I’m sorry,” Leigh said, and breathed out slowly, like he was trying to avoid losing his temper. “I’m sorry for lying to you. It’s… an old habit. I’m sorry about your wife, and your kid. I’m sorry about the submarine. I didn’t realize… I didn’t know you disliked ghouls so much. I’m sorry I lost it in the middle of the street.” MacCready had come to the meeting braced to be charmed. This was not charming. Leigh had the blunt, exhausted manner of a man ready to walk into the wild and never come back. 

“Okay. That and twenty caps gets me a drink. What do you want, Leigh?” The words slipped out more harshly than MacCready had intended. Leigh looked sad, and then he took a step forward. 

“Don’t come any closer,” MacCready said. Leigh took another step- slow, but not stopping, his hands at his side. It felt like being ten again, like standing at the gate and screaming for the scavengers to stay away, because there were bullets in his gun and he was willing to shoot. 

They hadn’t listened to him then, either. 

Shoot, MacCready thought. Shoot him, before he can get in range and knife you. Pull the fucking trigger. But he couldn’t. Leigh hadn’t done anything more aggressive than walk towards him, and if there was a chance, even a small one, for this to end well for the two of them, MacCready wanted to take it. Leigh was within arm’s length. He could move to one side, hit MacCready at close range with a knife or just take him to ground. MacCready was too small to fistfight with Leigh. He waited, already anticipating the burn of the knife on his side. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Leigh said gently. “The thing on the bridge was... reflexive. When you live undercover for ten years, maintaining your cover turns into a thing you do without really thinking about it.” Well, that sounded like bullshit. MacCready stepped forward and shoved the pistol into Leigh’s stomach. 

“Well, did you rethink it?” 

“MacCready, darlin’, walking up to an armed man is no genius strategy for not getting shot. I just wanted to explain a little.” Leigh smiled when he said it. It was the first time he’d looked like himself, really looked like himself, all conversation.  

“Some explanation,” MacCready said with a disdainful snort. “It really didn’t occur to you that shooting me over some irrelevant bullshit that happened two hundred years ago is just stupid?”

“I’m irrelevant shit that happened before the bombs felt,” Leigh said. 

“You’re relevant. You’re standing in front of me with a knife up your sleeve.” Leigh lifted his hands and raised his eyebrows, then grinned. 

“I’m standing in front of you unarmed,” Leigh said, and looked directly into MacCready’s eyes for the first time in the whole conversation. “I didn’t come here to hurt you,” he said, and folded his arms behind his head. That was convincing. “I’m running out of ways to apologize, so won’t you please come back with me?” This was the Leigh MacCready had expected- sweet, confident, clever. 

“Why?” MacCready said softly. “Why do you want me?” Leigh looked faintly bewildered.

“You’re the only one I have left,” Leigh said. If it was a lie, it wasn’t a very good lie, because Leigh had Piper and Nick and Preston and several thousand caps to boot. If it was true- MacCready wanted more than anything for it to be true, which meant that he had to assume that it wasn’t. Life didn’t just hand you these sort of presents.

“I bet you say that to everyone.” Leigh looked like MacCready had struck him across the face. His hands came down from behind his head to rest on MacCready’s shoulders. 

“I do,” he said, his voice a low, pained rumble. “But I mean it when I say it to you.” One of Leigh’s hands crept upwards, resting against the side of MacCready’s face. “Please.”

“I can’t,” MacCready whispered. Leigh was right- he’d never known how to bluff at all. Duncan was counting on him to get the cure. It was one thing to trust Leigh with his life, and another thing to trust him with Duncan’s. He had to get the cure, and then he could drink himself dead or get shot or go at last with Leigh. 

“Then just shoot me,” Leigh said, and leaned in, put his weight on the gun and pushed until the two of them were standing chest to chest, almost touching. “I’ve lost my wife. I’ve lost my son. I’ve lost my country. I’m tired of losing things. Please. Come with me.” There was real pain in Leigh’s voice, the sort of weakness too real to be shown to an enemy, even as part of a trap. 

“Give me three weeks,” MacCready said, his pulse thudding in his throat. Time enough for the cure to be acquired, sent, and confirmed by the returning caravans. Time enough to be sure that his boy was alive. 

“For what?”

“I have debts to pay,” MacCready said. He’d given Leigh enough, more than enough. If Leigh wanted more secrets out of him, he could pay just like everyone else. 

“Your son?” Leigh said, and MacCready jammed the barrel of his pistol into Leigh’s stomach. At this angle, the bullet would go upwards, through Leigh’s stomach and lungs, before coming out of his upper back and blowing out his spine. Leigh’s knife was cold against his neck. 

“Wouldn’t that be a sight?” Leigh said. “The two of us dead on the floor of a shitty hotel. Like one of those old pulp novels.” He leaned in, careless of the gun jammed against his stomach, and MacCready tilted his neck up against the scrape of the knife to kiss him. The kiss was soft and unhurried and despite everything MacCready felt the hot scrape of desire in his stomach. 

Love was an addiction, a physical thing as much as a mental one. Little, unimportant things, like the smell of someone’s skin, became maddening. He could hold himself apart in his head, but his body- his skin ached with warmth, his breath quickened, and it took all his effort to keep his knees steady and not relax into Leigh’s arms. All this, from a simple brush of Leigh’s lips against his own. It was like hunger, and worse than hunger. MacCready had twenty years of experience being hungry, and only two weeks of lying alone on his bedroll and trying not to feel cold without Leigh’s arm draped over his stomach. 

“No,” he said against Leigh’s lips, and pulled away. 

“No,” repeated Leigh, and the hand with a knife in it twitched against MacCready’s neck and then went still, as though Leigh was fighting down his reflexive reaction to being told no. MacCready smiled humorlessly. 

“Three weeks,” he said. Leigh exhaled. His face looked strange in the dim light of the motel room, the slash across his face illuminating the mismatch of his eyes. 

“But you will come back?” In response MacCready lifted his chin and kissed Leigh again, eyes closed, mouth open, hand pinned between the two of them, finger on the trigger. 

“I’ll see you before you see me,” he said, and stepped back, gun aimed steadily at Leigh’s torso. Leigh smiled, saluted, and swept out of the room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Short chapter, but it's part of a double update. Leigh's perspective, "true love don't go quiet" is up! It's the second chapter of Safe Distance.  
> \- I'm deviating from the canon progression of the romance at this point a bit here, but, ehh. imo if this weren't a video game people would do a lot more of going off and doing things on their own.  
> \- Nick Valentine: dad levels higher than anyone else in the story, including the people who actually have kids.


	8. pay what you owe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cait took a giant step forward, her armor making the thin floor shake, and MacCready heard a distant moan, then another and another, a whole chorus of rasping wails forced from rotted lungs. It was- it wasn’t that many, he tried to tell himself. Six, maybe seven or eight. It wasn’t the ghouls MacCready was afraid of, really. It was himself. Something had cracked inside of him when Lucy died, turned him into a coward.

It was a few minutes before MacCready could get his hands steady, like his body wasn’t quite sure that he’d survived and wanted to take a few minutes to make sure. When he finally did walk into the lobby, Leigh’s power armor was clanking around and for a dizzying moment he thought that it would come to violence after all, but it was only Cait. Leigh had left them a suit of power armor.

“You and the big man work it out, then?” Cait asked, her voice strange through the hiss of the helmet.  MacCready nodded, not trusting his voice. A suit of power armor was quite the gift. Typical Leigh, to be generous with the things that that mattered and close about the things that didn’t.  

“Hello? Earth to MacCready. Ya’re not secretly bleeding out on me, are ya?”

“Nah, just thinking about Leigh. I should have fallen in love with you, eh, Cait?” The word just tumbled out of his mouth like a misfired bullet. Love was supposed to be soft touches and shared burdens, not showdowns in hotel rooms, but MacCready didn’t have a better word. Stupidity, maybe, or insanity.

“As if I would ever take up with ya, ya dirty wasteland trash,” Cait said, and poked him with one giant finger. “Come on, let’s go. Or are you just gonna mope all day?”

“Screw off,” MacCready said, and they set off for the clinic.

 

They ran into raiders twice before getting to the clinic. Cait whooped with joy and charged into their ranks, the bullets clanging uselessly off her armor. The raider boss was too high on psycho to recognize death charging into his ranks, but after Cait tossed him in the air and curb-stomped his prone body the rest of the raiders scattered. MacCready was laughing so hard he could barely load the bullets into his gun to shoot the stragglers.

“Now I see why Leigh likes wearing this tin can so much.” The name felt like a slap. MacCready, long experienced with pain, ignored it and focused on stripping the raiders of valuables.

“So, what all is in this place?” Cait asked. “Something valuable, I hope?”  MacCready paused, trying to find a way to say this properly.  

“You know I have a son,” he said at last. Cait was silent. “Well... he’s been sick for a while. I heard that there might be a cure in this building. I guess it makes me soft, but I’d really do anything to help him get better.”

“It’s not soft,” Cait said, unexpectedly fierce. “Ya’re doing what’s right! That’s how a parent should be, looking out for their kid.” She strode off, the power armor whistling as it tried to keep pace with her anger. Cait never talked about her parents, but she sometimes got a dark look on her face watching Raul with his daughter in the Diamond City market. MacCready jogged lazily after her.

“So, since I’m doing what’s right, does that mean you’ll help me for free?”

“Not a chance,” Cait said, but her voice wavered. “I’ll give you the friendship discount, though, and not charge ya extra.”

They reached the clinic in the early afternoon. MacCready had left and come back from this place so many times he didn’t need to check the map: he knew every inch of the way. The usual pack of ferals was clustered around the front gate;. MacCready started the engagement by drilling two shots through the closest one’s skull. One down. His scope wobbled as Cait charged forward, her steps shaking the earth. He took out another feral as it drew back to strike her, and she lifted a third one and tossed it onto the spiked fence. The fourth and fifth went to his rifle and her fists, and then they were done. Despite MacCready’s biting anxiety, it had been easy.

Leigh really had been trying to die, back in the submarine. The memory sat in MacCready’s stomach like a rotten batch of cram, making his palms sweat and his chest feel tight. MacCready could have understood it if Leigh was alone, capless and low on supplies in the miserable wasteland, but MacCready had been with him. A different memory: Leigh pleading in that hotel room, saying that MacCready was the only one he had left. Cait was waving him forward: he pushed the memory away and went to join her.

“Look at this shite up here,” she said, pointing to the feral she’d impaled on the fence. “Right through the neck! I’m keeping this power armor forever.” MacCready laughed at her.

“You know, I’m pretty sure Leigh wanted me in that thing.”

“Ya want to fight me for it?” Cait said, amusement in her voice. MacCready had complained to her about power armor on multiple occasions. Power armor was loud, it was noisy, and it was expensive. The best defense for not getting hurt was to stay far away from the enemy, and at a distance power armor didn’t do anything but make you more visible.

“Nah, wouldn’t be fair.” he said to her, and smirked. “I would kick your ass.” Cait snickered and idly kicked one of the bodies lying on the ground.

“Come on then, tough guy. Let’s get the cure for ya boy.” They headed into the hospital. MacCready had never actually made it into the physical building before: every time he’d come before, he’d been low on supplies, and he’d run out of courage or bullets or both before he’d even picked off all the ferals outside.

The inside of the building was silent, thick swirls of dust shooting into the air with each step of Cait’s boots. MacCready took them slowly down the corridors, squinting down the barrel of the gun, but no rush materialized. They found a few ghouls lying on the floor, but they were easily dispatched with a few shots and a blow from Cait’s fist. MacCready was beginning to feel embarrassed when they ventured onto the silent top floor. Cait took a giant step forward, her armor making the thin floor shake, and MacCready heard a distant moan, then another and another, a whole chorus of rasping wails forced from rotted lungs.

“Time to party!” Cait shouted and waded forward, making herself into a blockade in the center of the aisle. MacCready took a knee and shot upwards, over the railings, as the ghouls stampeded over the top level and down the stairs. It was- it wasn’t that many, he tried to tell himself. Six, maybe seven or eight. It wasn’t the ghouls MacCready was afraid of, really. It was himself. Something had cracked inside of him when Lucy died, turned him into a coward. He’d been living, sure, running on habit, but he hadn’t believe that he could succeed, that there was a such thing as success left for him. It had died with Lucy.  

But here he was, with bullets in his bag and stimpacks in his pocket, ready for something to finally go right. The prospect was almost as frightening as the ghouls: the idea that he might actually be able to cure Duncan, that the happiness he’d found himself exiled from might actually still be available and waiting for him. He readied his gun.

The ghouls came in little groups, two or three at a time, stumbling and clawing over each other on the stairs. MacCready made it his goal to keep Cait from having to fight more than two at a time. If he couldn’t kill, he tried to cripple, aiming for legs and thighs when he couldn’t get a shot through the head. A pause in the flow of corpses down the stairs, and MacCready registered dimly that this would have been easier with Leigh’s collection of land mines.

“All clear?” he asked Cait, and a feral came crawling out of the hole in the ground directly in front of him. MacCready screamed and kicked it in the face, knocking it backwards, then stomped desperately at it, trying to avoid the flailing claws. It slipped back into the hole and he shot it once, twice, until it stopped moving. His hands were sweaty, his breath coming fast. He became dimly aware that Cait was laughing at him.

“Oh, shut up.”

They went onto the top floor to check the smaller rooms. MacCready reluctantly switched to his shotgun. Leigh had given it to him after they’d gone to the water plant, and he’d kept it ever since. Periodically, Leigh had stolen it from his pack and upgraded the stock or the barrel with some new mod, until MacCready had almost grown to expect it. Leigh had always seemed so sincere about wanting to keep MacCready safe.

One of the ghouls on the floor twitched, and MacCready fired without thinking. The recoil blasted him backwards and turned the feral’s upper body into a pile of paste. MacCready began to laugh, and kept laughing as another two ghouls came stumbling into the room and fell to the shotgun, easy as falling out of a tree.

“I forgot how awesome this thing is,” he said, and looked around. There was a terminal sitting on a desk, the display still blinking. MacCready had forgotten why they were in the hospital for a brief moment: the knowledge rushed back like the tide coming in. His vision wobbled slightly, like he might destroy the terminal by looking at it too hard.

“This your thing?” Cait asked, staring at it.

“It better be.” It took two tries before he could get his clumsy fingers to type in the password correctly, but eventually the screen went dark and then took him to the lockdown screen. MacCready sucked in a huge breath and disabled the lockdown. A few seconds, and then the message: Lockdown ended.

“It worked,” he said, his heart thudding in his throat.

“Sure did,” said Cait. “Let’s do the basement tomorrow, eh? Your leg is bleeding, and I could use me a drink.” MacCready hadn’t even noticed.

They holed up on the roof of the parking lot outside the building. MacCready didn’t want to sleep inside with all the dust and the potential for ghouls they hadn’t noticed, and the parking structure was the closest easily secured structure. Cait dragged the rusty carcass of a car up the ramp to block off the exit, laughing, while MacCready stitched up his leg. The ghoul at the edge of the pit must have slashed him when he was kicking it.

The cut wasn’t awful, but it was deep enough to need stitches. He heated the needle in the fire, took a swig of whisky, then started sewing. The first stitch was always the worst, but after that it was just matches at a bonfire. After a while your body just didn’t have any more capability to feel pain.

“That looks like shit.” Cait had finished making the barricade, and returned to plop down by the fire next to him.  “Could never stand up sewing these kind of things meself.”

“Yeah, Lucy used to do them for me, but after she died I got used to doing them myself.” He snorted. The first time Leigh had seen him doing his own stitches he’d reacted like he’d just seen MacCready shit out a pile of caps. It was just stitches.

“Lucy? Was that your wife?” MacCready finished the last set, then tied off the knot.

“Yep. Ferals got her.” Cait sat back on her heels, then passed him the bottle of whiskey.

“Sucks.”

“Sure does.”

 

They started again in the morning. MacCready’s cut had scabbed during the night, but he allowed Cait to persuade him to use half a stimpack on the affected area. Leigh had stuffed his suit with about ten of the things, along with Med-X and a few other chems.

“No psycho, though,” Cait said, and made a face.

“You still on that shit?” MacCready didn’t see any problem with a few chems here and there, but getting addicted was just stupid, and Cait was well past that point. She snorted and punched his shoulder lightly.

“I might have a favor of me own to ask you, after this, snipey, but don’t ya worry yer ugly mug about it.” She climbed in the suit, which clicked shut on her. The plating on the armor was looking scratched up, but neither of them knew how fix it. Cait would just have to take her licks.

The old hospital was less menacing on the second round. They opened up the terminal and waited gingerly for ghouls to come flooding out. Nothing. Finally, Cait marched into the chokepoint, stuck her head through the door and yelled for the ghouls to come on already, because she was getting bored. Nothing. They made their way through a series of smaller room filled with medical junk that MacCready didn’t really understand or care about. Test tubes, microscopes, aluminum containers, the sort Leigh was always collecting. MacCready started to pick them up and then remembered guiltily that Leigh wasn’t with him. It should have been easy not to think about Leigh, between the ghouls and the terror of knowing that every steps took him a step closer to Duncan’s cure, but it wasn’t. Leigh kept creeping in at the edges: in the hot pink flames on the power armor, in the mods on MacCready’s gun, in the sting when sweat trickled into the cut on his neck.

They came, at last, into the lowest level and paused at the top of the stairs.

“Come if you think you can handle it!” Cait shouted, and the room rang with her voice. They stood and waited in the silence afterwards, expecting a chorus of yells, but there was nothing. A single ghoul came running towards them. MacCready shot it, bemused, and the two of them watched the body slide slowly down the ramp.

“Huh,” said MacCready, and they advanced into the room. They found another feral lying on the ground: Cait crushed it under one foot and they walked to the other side. The doors were sealed, kept shut by a terminal. MacCready groaned.

“God dang computers.” He nervously tapped the on button and the screen filled with a confusing mix of numbers and symbols. What did Leigh do when he worked on these things? MacCready clicked a few words at random, hoping one of them would work. Nothing. The computer flashed and then refused to respond.

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” he said, his stomach sinking.

“We’ll make a different way in,” Cait said and slammed her fist into one of the opaque windows with a crunch that shook the room. The window cracked slightly. She wound up again and punched, the metal of the power armor slamming into the window. A long crack appeared, running along the length of the window. What the heck were these windows made of? Cait stood back a few steps, then charged, the whole weight of the power armor bearing down on the window. The glass shook and then popped into the room, revealing a writhing mass of ghouls. Limbs began to emerge from the hole, grabbing blindly at Cait. She yanked herself free and stumbled back a few steps as ghouls began to swarm out of the hole.

A glowing hand emerged from the mess. All the terror that MacCready had expected and not found came flooding back and he froze. A glowing one! Some stubborn son-of-a-bitch who hadn’t let death take properly take him and been punished with a half-life of suffering, stumbling in blind pain from crater to crater, destroying everyone not fast enough to run. It made MacCready’s teeth hurt just to look at it.

Cait knocked the thing in the head, and then more ghouls were swarming out of the hole. Too many. MacCready, frozen in terror, remembered abruptly that he had legs with which to run. He might be able to get out the door and slam it shut, come back here later with Leigh and grab the cure and whatever was left of Cait. His brain stuttered on the thought. A ghoul broke off from the pack and charged him and he jerked back. The shotgun went off. The ghoul staggered, and he lined up the gun and fired again on automatic.

He could stay, too, and then Leigh would come and find his corpse, and maybe the cure would still get to Duncan. If Leigh got past the glowing one. If Leigh didn’t come over suicidal again. The sound of the shotgun startled two more ghouls into coming after him, and he retreated down the hall, firing, reloading, running, and then firing again. One of them caught him on the arm and he fought it off with the rifle butt, then fired point blank into it’s face. Blood sprayed across the wall, and then it was silent. At the end of the hall Cait was fighting the Glowing One and two other ghouls, a feral trampled under her feet. MacCready could run and she would be dead before she knew.

He thought of Lucy, torn apart by ghouls, and of Duncan lying in his bed, dying, perhaps already dead and something cracked in his heart, or knit back together. The ghoul was unbearable, but so was the thought of losing Cait, the thought of surviving, limping along forever, slowly spending his friends and his morals until there was nothing left of him at all and he rejoined the gunners or became a raider or drank himself to death.

He loaded the shotgun and went back down the corridor. Up close, the Glowing One gave off a terrible heat, like a small, nasty sun. Better to start with the smaller ones. He shot the two ghouls scrabbling at Cait’s arms, one perfect shot to the back of each sunken skull, the sound echoing like a scream in the narrow corridor. The Glowing One turned and shrieked, a wave of visible radiation rising through the air. MacCready had a brief moment of regret for his short, shitty life, but most of his concentration was locked into reloading. His nerves were tingling, his reflexes slow and unwieldy. He backed up, hit wall, and scrambled blindly to one side, not daring to take his eyes off the enemy.

The Glowing One’s first swipe hit his arm. Where it touched, his skin blistered and went numb, sensation fleeing the wounded limb. The second swipe hit his shoulder, knocking him to the side, and he stumbled blindly into the corridor and ran backwards, stumbling in his blind terror.

There was only room for one thought in his head: keep the shotgun up, keep the gun between you and that disgusting thing, keep the goddamn shotgun up you dumb son-of-a bitch!

He fired twice, staggering the thing, and sprinted around the corner, loading the shotgun as he went. The arm that had taken the swipe earlier was nearly useless, his right shoulder straining to lift the heavy gun. There was a stimpack in his pocket and no time to use it: the thing was nearly on him again.

Click. The first shot went wide, barely grazing the thing’s arm, but the second caught it in the forehead. It howled, radiation glowing through the gaps in its skin, toothless gums green in a lipless mouth. MacCready ran again, around the corner and back towards Cait. The suit of power armor wasn’t moving. He jammed the shells into the gun and turned, stumbling. The last wave of radiation had made him dizzy.

The ghoul ran at him, stumbling and clawing, and he shot it in the forehead, reloaded, then shot it again. How much could the damn thing take? He fumbled for the ammo in his pockets with shaking hands and the ghoul lashed out, the nails clawing along the side of his neck and skittering off his arm. He stumbled backwards and tripped, terror flooding his system.

This was it, he thought, disbelieving, and then the wall behind him moved. A huge, armored fist shot out, knocking the ghoul away. Cait! MacCready stumbled to his feet, fumbling for ammo with his good hand, the cut across his neck screaming with pain. His vision flickered, swathes of gray cutting through the world. The feral had staggered back. The feral was recovering, beginning to charge. The shells were in his hand. Cait stepped between MacCready and the feral, the glow muffled by her suit. The shells were in the shotgun.

He fired both shots into the feral at point blank, the noise alone staggering in the small room, then slammed his rifle butt into the thing’s head. It fell on the floor and Cait stomped on it with one giant foot. MacCready, calm as he had never been in his life, reloaded, shot the thing twice, reloaded again, and then shot the thing dead as it lay twitching, trapped under the huge weight of the power armor. The world was shaking, sliding in and out of focus. He staggered backward a few steps and his legs collapsed out from under him.

“Ooooh, groan, look at me, I’m a zombie,” he said mockingly to the glowing corpse, his hands shaking so badly he could barely dig a stimpack out of his pocket. “Who’s dead now, asshole? Still you.” The stimpack went into the burned ruin of his neck, the pinch of the needle invisible against the pain throbbing through his whole body. A few breaths, and the grey fuzzing the world began to lift, objects coming back into focus. No movement from the power armor. Cait was quite possibly dead, and wouldn’t that be an awful fucking joke?

He used the shotgun as a crutch, gingerly pointing the barrel away from him, then staggered over to the power armor and took out the core, then opened it up. Cait was slumped over, her chest barely rising, a thin stream of blood trickling from her nose.

“Oh no you don’t,” MacCready said, hoping she could hear him. His last stimpack went into her arm, and her eyelids fluttered. He dragged her from the suit, then grabbed Med-X from the inner compartment and swallowed down half a dose. The nausea was starting to set in, which meant that there was a very real danger that in a few minutes he wouldn’t be able to take anything. Cait needed the pills now.

“Cait!” he said, and knelt by her. “Cait!” He slapped her face and she lashed out with a punch that knocked him onto his ass.

“Calm down, ya little bitch,” she muttered, and MacCready began to laugh.

 

After all that, the cure was a little thing in a capsule, barely the size of MacCready’s forearm. He grabbed it gingerly, aware that he was holding Duncan’s life in his hands, then wrapped it carefully in some old rags while Cait ransacked the place.

There was a magazine for Leigh’s collection, and a trunk full of weapons and ammo, as well as stimpacks and chems, complete with water to wash them down. Cait and MacCready toasted with the purified water, then swallowed down more Med-X and headed to the elevator. Cait had saved MacCready’s life when she stepped in front of the ghoul, and Leigh had made the whole damn thing possible. His shadow was over everything MacCready did- his mods on MacCready’s gun, his chems in their blood, his ammo in their pockets, his armor on their bodies. Whatever else happened, he and Cait had saved MacCready, saved him and his son.

“Thanks,” he said, and realized dimly that there were tears in his eyes.

“Don’t get all mushy on me,” Cait said, and clapped one heavy arm on his shoulder. “We gotta save your boy, right?” MacCready had to blink away his tears and clear his throat before he could speak.

“Jokes on you, Cait. You do me a favor like this, and you’re stuck with me forever.”

 

They made Goodneighbor by nightfall, both of them still sweating off the effects of the radiation despite the Rad-X, and MacCready gave the cure to Daisy. He wasn’t sure, later, what he’d said to her: his mind had been completely wiped by the glow of success. His memories started and ended at the vial of medicine going into Daisy’s hand and then disappearing under the counter. He’d stumbled to the triggerman hideout with Cait and slept, only to wake up in the early morning sweating and half-convinced it was a dream. In the early morning light the damage to the power armor was harder to see: he’d had to look at the burns on his arm before he could believe it was real.

It was six days for the caravans to get out to the farm Duncan was on, and eight to come back. MacCready took the rear guard and earned his caps shooting any raiders stupid enough to announce their presence. The farmhands didn’t talk much to him, nor did he talk to them. There was nothing to say. Duncan was in front of him somewhere, or Duncan’s grave was, and Leigh was behind.

He split from the caravan on the fifth day and hurried ahead, arriving at the farm before nightfall, the cure wrapped in his pack. Duncan was very small, and he didn’t stir when MacCready injected him with the cure. The farmers watched, quiet and concerned, and brought MacCready food, and a little water, and later a pillow. He stayed awake long into the night, listening to his son’s labored breathing, his legs aching from the road.

Footsteps woke him and he jerked awake. It was near noon, if the sunlight blaring into his tired eyes was any indication, and Duncan was sitting up in his little bed.

“Dad?”

 

It was day nine of the twenty-one days MacCready had asked Leigh for, but he could already feel the noose tightening around his neck. He watched Duncan play fetch with the farm dogs and thought about the massive constellation of trouble that surrounded Leigh, the lies, the Brotherhood of Steel, the grudge against the Institute. Leigh walked in a constant halo of danger like a feral giving off radiation, and he didn’t even seem to notice. He was a high risk, a gamble that might leave MacCready dead, and for what?

A couple of stimpacks, a rescue from a cage, a kiss in a motel, a promise to return. Love, for the two caps that was worth, and a desire to give something instead of taking all the time. One of the dogs was refusing to give Duncan the stick. He shouted in joy and began to play tug of war, but all of his weight wasn’t enough to budge the dog. MacCready flicked his cigarette into the grass, stomped on it, and went to help his son play fetch.

He’d have to leave soon if he wanted to make it back to Diamond City before the deadline.

 

MacCready arrived in Diamond City on day twenty, back aching from all the walking and halfway ready to make-up with Leigh just to have a bed to sleep on again. The door was uncharacteristically locked. He knocked, feeling like he was up against a firing squad. No response. Leigh’s locks were more or less impossible to jimmy, but he kept a key on the roof in the wine bottle. MacCready swung himself to the top of the awning and clambered up, but when he reached the little rooftop area the door was open. MacCready pulled his shotgun and headed into the house.

“Hello?”

There was an institute courser in Leigh’s living room, and he had a rifle pointed square at MacCready’s center of mass.

“Don’t move,” the courser said. He was tall and dark skinned, with sunglasses and the same black leather uniform that all the coursers wore. MacCready had seen it on the other end of a scope once, and hauled ass.

“Not moving,” MacCready said. His shotgun was useless at this range, and there was no one else in the house, or Leigh’s corpse was stashed around the corner. Unlikely. The courser wasn’t injured at all, and Leigh wasn’t the type to go without a fight.

“Eyes on the mercenary,” the courser reported into a little mouthpiece. “Affirmative.” He turned to MacCready- his expression didn’t change, but MacCready could feel his attention like gun barrel pressed to the back of his head. He stared back.

“Can I help ya with something?”

“What do you know about the vault dweller who goes by Leigh?” the courser asked, moving the rifle to remind MacCready that it was there. Good intimidation, bad technique. What would Leigh do in the this situation? Leigh would lie. Leigh would bluff like a son of a bitch, then run. MacCready smiled real wide like he was about to make a lot of caps and made a big show of setting his gun down.

“He doesn’t pay me enough, for one. Two, he’s the best damn engineer in the nuclear engineer. Three, he’s hellbent on getting to the Institute and he’s got a grudge. You can have that for free.” The courser had called him a mercenary: he ought to be expecting a demand for caps.

“You’ll tell me whatever I want to know.”

“Okay, okay,” said MacCready, and leaned on the panic button Leigh kept hidden in the frame of his doorway. The turrets on the bookshelf blazed to life, peppering the courser with bullets, and MacCready bolted onto the roof, threw himself down and sprinted for Arturo’s stand. Courser or not, the thing probably couldn’t stand a shot from the fat man Arturo kept behind the counter. He ducked behind the counter, braced for a spray of shots, but there was nothing. Arturo stared at him quizzically.  

“Everything okay, MacCready?” Arturo asked as MacCready cowered behind the counter.

“Anyone coming out of Leigh's house?”

“Not that I can see. Someone in there?” MacCready started to tell him and then remembered that this was Diamond City and the people would probably lynch Nick if word got out that a courser had made it all the way into the city.

“Maybe,” he muttered, loading bullets into his gun. “I walked in and I saw someone I didn’t recognize. Armed.”

“You want me to call the guards?”

“Just wait a bit, and tell me if you see anyone come out.” MacCready waited breathlessly behind the counter, but the courser never materialized. Arturo snuck MacCready out through the back of his store and he ran for the detective agency, startling Ellie at the front desk.

“Courser, in Leigh’s house.”

“What?” They grabbed Piper and went to investigate, but when they entered the house it was empty, the turrets nothing but small heaps of burning steel. Neither Valentine nor Piper seemed surprised at all.

“Cards on the fu-freaking table,” MacCready said.  “Leigh’s got a grudge against the institute. Why? I know you know, Piper. What was he doing at Fort Strong?” Piper glanced at Nick, who looked back. It stung. Why had Leigh trusted them, but not him?

“Kid’s got a right to know. Leigh’s got an awful lot of secrets.”

“Blue’s wife was killed by the Institute,” Piper said quietly. “And they stole his kid. That’s what brought him to Diamond City- he was looking for someone to help him find his son, Shaun.” MacCready remembered Leigh yelling on the bridge, his face twisted in laughter. ‘It makes me wonder if they sent you. I can’t think of someone more perfect for me- a dead wife, a lost son. Exactly the same.’ MacCready hadn’t been able to parse it at the time. A sharp stab of regret hit him, but he dismissed it. He was here now, in Leigh’s house, waiting for him. He had come back.

“He had something planned in Goodneighbor. What was it?” This time, Valentine replied.

“The merc who killed his wife- he tracked him down and killed him. Used the enhancements to root through his memories. It turns out the reason no one’s been able to find the Institute is that there's no door in. They've got some kind of teleportation device.” 

“Teleporters? Like in the comics?”

“Like in the comics,” Piper confirmed, folding her arms.

“Where is he now?”

“Supply run with Preston. He killed a courser and got some kind of chip off the body, but he can't crack it. Apparently, he thinks he can get into the Institute if he can just get the information off the chip, but he's having some trouble." MacCready had seen a single courser tear through a whole camp of raiders looking for a single synth, then fight its way out with a body over one shoulder.

"He must be feeling better, then, if he took down a courser."

“I don’t know what’s going on with you two, although I’m about to find out, MacCready- but Blue’s been scary ever since you left. I almost feel sorry for the courser.”

“Good,” MacCready said, glancing up at the twisted wreck of the turrets. There were scorch marks on the floor from the bullets, but not blood.

That night, he stayed in Piper's house, still shaken. At midnight, unable to sleep, he went upstairs to the kitchen to find the courser, arms folded, leaning against the counter. No weapon was visible. Not an assassination, then. A business deal. Piper’s sister was asleep on the couch not twenty feet away, a blanket pulled over her. MacCready hoped that if she woke up, she had the good sense not to let it show.

“Decided you were in the market for a new mercenary after all, huh?”

“The Institute has accepted your offer to come and work for us,” the courser said. It had a curiously cold, flat tone, like the words were being processed in some far away machine and then transmitted here. They can go anywhere they want, he thought, and they know where I sleep. What if I say yes? What if I say no?

“I’d like to hear what I’m signing up for before I agree to anything.”

“Free use of Institute resources, including a discretionary fund, biotic enhancements at the director’s discretion, and health care for your son.” Duncan. He thought of the birds that had accompanied the caravan, wheeling and moving too fast to track. If he said no, would a courser appear at the little farm, gun in hand?

“Well, that sounds like an offer I can’t refuse. I’ll go get my rifle.”

“Go ahead. Keep in mind that I can kill your friends whenever I want, sleeping or awake.” Piper could handle herself, but MacCready wasn’t going to drag Natalie into this. He grabbed his shotgun and headed back up. The courser looked over his gear with something like approval, then stood next to him, hand on his shoulder.

“Unit X6-88, ready to relay with the mercenary,” and then there was nothing but light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Edited to line up better with Leigh's POV of this time period. For maximum suspense, read chapter 3 of Safe Distance before continuing to the next chapter of this.  
> -We are well and truly leaving canon at this point, although I will do my best to make everything line up with canon lore, if not with the plot. Let's be real, it wouldn't be interesting if you knew how it was going to end.  
> \- Love is a choice.  
> -I am so mad that the Institute didn't replace any of your companions with robots. Come on. That would have been an amazing side-quest.  
> -What does Duncan look like???? Did the cure get to him in time???? Tell meeee, Bethesda. 
> 
> Next Time: The Institute, my problematic fave X6, a long awaited reunion.


	9. the things a body demands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tinny voice came over the loudspeakers. "Thinking hard, Mr. MacCready?" MacCready, who had been expecting some level of bullshit, narrowed his eyes and glared at the glass.  
> “Thinking of improvements to your waiting room. It could use a table, maybe a few chairs and a cooler.” A laugh came over the intercom.  
> “We don’t keep our valuables where they might get smashed. I’m sure you understand. Now, I have a few questions for you before we let you in.” The voice was unquestionably a man, probably old. It figured.  
> “Go ahead,” MacCready said.

The teleporter dumped MacCready in a white room with no doors, only a single long panel of tinted glass. The courser was nowhere in sight. He waited a few seconds, but there was nothing. They were going to make him wait.

“You know, these intimidation techniques work better when you threaten people with something other than boredom.” No response. He settled in against the wall and started to plan.

They’d asked for information on Leigh. What was he willing to tell them? Easier to start with the obvious stuff, in case they didn’t know some of it. One, they’d killed Leigh’s wife. Two, Leigh was out for revenge. Three, Leigh had some sort of plan to get in, even though MacCready didn’t know what it was. It was all tech mumbo-jumbo to him, but Leigh had an eye for this kind of thing.

Things they probably didn’t need to know: one, that Leigh was a spy, two, that MacCready was in love with him, and three, that he and MacCready had fought. MacCready was going to miss his appointment: he could only hope that Piper put together what had happened and told Leigh to mount a rescue expedition. Leigh was going to flip his shit: first his wife, then MacCready.

“Thinking hard, Mr. MacCready?” A tinny voice came over the loudspeakers. MacCready, who had been expecting some level of bullshit, narrowed his eyes and glared at the glass.

“Thinking of improvements to your waiting room. It could use a table, maybe a few chairs and a cooler.” A laugh came over the intercom.

“We don’t keep our valuables where they might get smashed. I’m sure you understand. Now, I have a few questions for you before we let you in.” The voice was unquestionably a man, probably old. It figured.

“Go ahead,” MacCready said.

“What’s your relationship to Leigh?”

“We’ve been traveling together for a few months.” Did the Institute have spies inside the Brotherhood? In Diamond City? It was more or less public knowledge that he and Leigh were a couple. “We slept together a few times, nothing too serious.” Did letting someone put a knife to your throat make a relationship more or less serious?

“Could you kill him? How?”

“Probably.” MacCready hated to say it, but it was true even if he didn’t. “From a distance. I’m an excellent shot, and Leigh always takes his helmet off when he gets in sight of a settlement to wave to the guards.” He knew exactly the spot, too: he could hit Leigh from the top of the old drive-in as he walked up to the gate and be gone before anyone realized where the shot had come from. The image was horrifyingly clear in his mind.

“Would you?”

“I’d prefer not to,” MacCready said evenly.

“Why?” MacCready shrugged and tried to look bored. It was like talking to the sergeant back in the gunners: trying to seem obedient while simultaneously not giving anything away.

“Leigh’s a tough person. It’d be easier not to kill him.”

“Do you think there’s any possibility he would join the Institute?” If he could keep his temper, Leigh would absolutely join the Institute, but only so he could scout all their weak spots.

“You’d have to apologize for his dead wife, maybe blame it on your mercenary. He really loved her. He loves science and high-tech shit, he’s always working on his suits and radiation weapons, so you could get him with that, but you’d have to deal with his wife first.” The sound of a button being pushed, and the glass turned clear. An old man was standing on the other side, flanked by the courser who had come in with MacCready.

“And his son?”

“I don’t know anything about his son,” MacCready said. There was something oddly familiar about the old man’s face and the shape of his nose.

“One last question. Would you say that Leigh is a family man?” MacCready felt like he was being asked an entirely different question, one with a much more important answer. The old man’s eyes were the same color as Leigh’s...

“What did you do with Leigh’s son?” MacCready asked, staring through the glass. When the old man smiled, it was like a target coming into focus, everything snapping into place at once.

 

The courser let him out of the room and briefed him on his first assignment. The thing’s name, if numbers could be considered a name, was X6-88, and it neither moved nor spoke like a man. The movements were too fast, more like a cat than a human being, and it spoke like everything it said was an item read from some internal list.

“Your first assignment is to help Father recruit Leigh to the Institute.” Was that disapproval in the thing’s voice? “Father has been tracking his progenitor’s progress across the wasteland for some time, and he wishes to persuade him to join the Institute. If he is not able to, he will hold you personally responsible.” MacCready wasn’t sure what progenitor meant, so he just nodded.

“Yeah, sure. I shouldn’t have any trouble talking Leigh around, although it might be harder if you insist on coming along.” The courser grunted.

“Leigh will be coming here. He plans to build a signal interceptor. If he can do it, it will be proof that he is a scientist worth having at the Institute. Father anticipates his arrival within the week. In the meantime, you are to provide a full report on Leigh and become familiarized with Institute procedure.” They turned out of a corridor into a huge central room filled with the sound of rushing water and the smell of freshly-cut grass. MacCready scanned the walls and roof, his eyes tracking the people walking along the glass tunnels. Stupid, to build with a material that neither protected nor concealed the people within.

“The Institute,” X6 said, and there was something like reverence in his voice. “You’ll have time to look later.” MacCready hurried after him. They went into a hall labeled “Synth Retention”, past a pair of robotic guards and into a shooting range.

“They showed us the tapes of your contest on the Prydwen. It was very impressive. Would you like to keep your rifle, or take a new one?”

“Can I test the new one?” MacCready asked, and X6 nodded, as though he hadn’t expected anything else. They went through rifles, pistols, automatic weapons and grenades, X6 approving MacCready’s choices, and then to a doctor’s office where MacCready was ordered to strip and shower. He climbed into the shower, trying not to think of the only other time he’d been in a clean shower. Leigh had been with him. Leigh had kissed him under the running water, then gotten down on his knees, smirking at the expression on MacCready’s face.

“Fuck,” he said, the sound lost in the water, and hurried through the rest of his shower, half-hard from remembering. The Institute scientists were just on the other side of the room, talking about some stupid science shit, and all MacCready could think of was how badly he wanted Leigh, how close he’d come to seeing him again.

Someone had stolen his clothes while he was in the shower and left out a pair of black pants and a white shirt. MacCready suspected it was what the coursers wore under their coats. He changed reluctantly into it and went back out into the room.

“What happened to my stuff?”

“The people in the armory will be upgrading it,” one of the scientists said, and held out his hand to MacCready, who shook it suspiciously. “I’m Bruce. We’ve been told to discuss benefits with you. Do you have any diseases you know of? Migraines, weird rashes, itching?” MacCready thought of the inspection on the Prydwen and snickered.

“Nah, I’m fine.”

“Nothing? Would you like an enhancement, to make your reflexes better, or make you more durable?” The man sounded strangely eager, like he couldn’t wait to open up MacCready and poke around inside of him.

“No, I’m alright.” The man looked distinctly disappointed.

“Would you like anything for your son? He seems to be recovering fine, but some medicine might be able to speed it along.”

“Duncan? You can see Duncan?” MacCready had sprung out of his seat and grabbed the scientist by the shoulder before he’d even realized that he’d moved. He let go of the man and stepped back. “Where is he?”

“We have him on camera,” the other scientist said. MacCready registered vaguely that she was attractive, with dark red hair. “Would you like me to bring it up for you?” MacCready nodded and watched impatiently as the woman fiddled around with the screen, eventually bringing up a grainy overhead view of Duncan playing in the field behind the farm. He’d gotten fatter in the time MacCready had been traveling, and there was more color in his cheeks. MacCready watched, transfixed, as Duncan stumbled over a tree root and tipped over, laughing. One of the farm dogs was watching him play.

“So, did you want anything?” MacCready wrenched his face back under control and forced himself to look away from the monitor.

“Not for Duncan, not right now.” The man looked like he was about to insist, so MacCready changed tactics.

“Do you have anything for teeth?”

 

The next few days were spent in endless rounds of operations on his teeth, briefings with X6, and intercom interviews with “Father.” Bruce programmed the computer in his quarters to show him the cameras closest to Duncan, and in between Institute duties he watched his son play.

X6 caught him at the computer once, and frowned.

“Humans certainly are attached to their offspring,” he said. “Do you think Leigh will feel this way about Father?”

“Are you attached to him?” MacCready asked, curious if a thing like X6 could feel attachment. He didn’t really want to talk about Leigh.

“Father is the future of the Institute,” X6 replied.

Finally, MacCready was called in to talk to “Father” in person. They met in a sterile conference room, one whole wall of which was taken up by monitors. The monitors displayed camera feeds from around the Commonwealth- Diamond City, the Cambridge police station, the facade of some old church. MacCready glanced quickly through them, scanning for Leigh, but he wasn’t on screen.

Father moved slightly and MacCready’s attention snapped back to him. Up close, MacCready could see all the little things about him that looked like Leigh- the nose, the eyebrows, the shape of the hand. The man noticed him looking and met his eyes.

“I do look like him, don’t I? Strange, how genetics work. He had no influence on my upbringing, and yet there are so many things about us that are similar. Perhaps your own son will turn out the same.”

“I hope not,” MacCready said, thinking of Lucy’s knack for medicine and her effortless kindness. “My wife was better than I am.”

“Well. My coursers assure me that you’re quite the shot, so your wife must have been something.” The man sighed and steepled his hands together. “You counseled that I should apologize to Leigh for the actions of Kellogg. I do find her death regrettable. Upon further investigation, it seems that she was a brilliant scientist, on par with my father.” He hit a button and the screens switched to a video feed of Leigh fiddling with dials on a large machine. MacCready’s stomach twisted. Leigh’s face was gaunt with exhaustion, dark circles growing under his eyes, and he clearly hadn’t shaved or showered in some time. There was a manic look of determination on his face, as of a man who feels his strength failing and prepares himself to do one last task and and one last task only.

“He’s wired together a signal relay almost by himself,” the director commented. “Truly a talent for engineering.” The camera was up close. Whoever was broadcasting this feed was right next to Leigh.

“Leigh’s very smart,” MacCready said.

“Indeed. And right now, he’s bent all that intelligence on finding a way to destroy us.” For just a moment, the person next to Leigh was reflected in the panel of metal, and MacCready caught sight of Paladin Danse. He swallowed down the urge to laugh. Elder Maxson’s most devoted Paladin was a synth! Oblivious to MacCready’s amusement, the director continued. “I would like to take you up on your offer to talk to him. He has expressed concern about your status on multiple occasions.” The director’s tone was cold, as though Leigh’s affections were some sort of strategic blunder that he expected MacCready to explain. MacCready looked him straight in the face when he spoke.

“He knows I’m a good partner.” Silence in the room. If the director though he could  intimidate MacCready with silence, the joke was on him. Leigh’s face was on the screen, his eyebrows drawn together as he worked. MacCready could have watched him for hours.  

“If you’re a good partner, then why did you leave him?” The director’s stupid comments were beginning to get on MacCready’s nerves. He might be Leigh’s son, but he lacked any of his father’s charm.

“I had other stuff to do. Besides, the worst thing I could do would be get myself killed. This way, I can make sure everything runs smoothly for him when he gets here.” If Shaun tried talking to Leigh in that condescending tone of voice, or worse, told him that his wife’s death was “regrettable”, Leigh was likely to shoot him in the face and take his chances.

“I had hoped to greet my father myself.”

“I won’t tell him anything you don’t want me to. I’ll just help put him in the right state of mind to speak with you,” The director looked straight at MacCready. He probably thought it was intimidating, but MacCready had stared down raiders and deathclaws and sergeants. He’d stared down Leigh, and for all of his minions and cameras, Shaun wasn’t half the man his father was. MacCready was betting on it.  

“I’ll allow you to talk to him first,” he said, and turned away, his attention already refocusing on a set of papers in front of him.  

 

Leigh finished the array four days later and teleported into the Institute in the early morning, armed with a modified fat man, a missile launcher, and enough explosives to storm the gates of hell. MacCready greeted him in the corridor, unarmed and dressed in his usual coat and hat for maximum recognizability. He’d had a whole speech planned, but when he saw Leigh the words stuttered and died in his throat.

“Hey,” he managed. “Welcome to the Institute. I’ll be your friendly mercenary guide.” Silence, Leigh’s stare obvious even through the power armor.

“I thought you were dead,” he said at last, anger crackling in his voice. “You fucking vanished. Is this what you wanted the three weeks for?”

“I showed up at your house on time,” MacCready retorted. “You were out running an errand, and then, you know, sometimes teleportation just happens.” A moment of tense silence, and then Leigh stepped out of his suit, the joints hissing. He snatched his shotgun off the back of his armor and jammed it into MacCready’s stomach.

“I busted my ass to get here,” he hissed, grabbing MacCready by the arm. “You couldn't have sent a fucking note with a spy bird?”

“Believe it or not, I don’t run the show around here,” MacCready hissed. “Calm down. I was getting medicine for Duncan, as you damn well know.”

“You, or your institute synth double?”

“I’m not a goddamn synth, Leigh!” MacCready said and shoved him off, pissed that Leigh was bringing up the same stupid argument from the bridge. “The Institute doesn’t care about me! The only reason I’m here in the first place is because I stupidly came back like I promised you I would.” This was going badly. MacCready swallowed down his anger, afraid that the director was going to barge into the room, get shot and blow everything to hell. “Listen to me. The director wants to talk to you. I need you to stay calm and listen to him.”

“Doesn’t take much to buy your loyalties, does it?” Leigh said scornfully. MacCready grabbed him by the shoulders and turned them so that none of the cameras would catch his face.

“They have my son,” he mouthed, and then the door opened behind them.

“MacCready, out,” the director said.

“He can stay,” Leigh said, grabbing MacCready’s arm. There was a tense moment where he and the director stared at each other, and then Leigh let go of MacCready’s arm and visibly reset.

“You’ve caught me at a bad time, I’m afraid,” he said, and extended his arm. As the two men shook hands, MacCready felt a sense of relief so staggering it made his knees weak. “I’m Leigh, as you probably know. Who are you, and why did you kill my wife?”

“I’m your son, Shaun.”

Absolute silence.

“How?” Leigh said, his voice trembling.

MacCready stared at the wall, struck with a sudden and deep shame. The whole of the Institute had seemed unreal, a dream of white walls and unliving creatures, and he’d been so consumed with worry about Duncan and himself that he’d forgotten what all of this would mean for Leigh. Once again, he’d been too focused on running to see where he was going.

“I’d like to have this chat in private,” Shaun said, and this time Leigh let MacCready go. He dashed out the door, almost hitting X6, who escorted him back to his room in disapproving silence. The door slammed, and MacCready was left in the utter silence of his well-furnished prison cell. He flopped onto the bed, thinking of Leigh.

Right now, Shaun would be apologizing for his wife’s death, and then trying to sell Leigh on the Institute, and then probably taking him on a tour. Leigh would be quiet at first, then slowly lighten up, make it seem like he was coming around, and by the end of he’d be smiling and asking questions and Shaun would believe that his father had come home to him at last. It was so easy to love Leigh.

Soon, he would be walking around the Institute, taking  taking note of the weak points, the way the whole chamber could be made to collapse with a single set of well-placed explosives, the way all the coursers could be sealed off by jamming a single door. The full tour, and all that time Leigh would be lying through his teeth, as he always did, and Shaun would believe him. A habit, Leigh had called it in the hotel. He’d called himself a man in the habit of lying, and then he’d told MacCready that there was no one else for him and MacCready had believed him. Duncan was moving on the computer screen. MacCready shoved away his thoughts of Leigh and went to watch his son from a distance. It felt like he was looking down a scope.

 

Some time later, there was a knock on the door, and then Leigh walked in. He’d put his guns down somewhere and acquired a folder filled with papers. The stood a while, staring at each other, and then Leigh came in, the door closing behind him. MacCready noticed without meaning to that Leigh’s eyes were puffy from a lack of sleep, and he’d lost some weight.  He swiveled in his chair to face Leigh.

“So, you’re working for the Institute, huh?” Leigh said. Everything about him was totally neutral— his tone, his voice, his posture. MacCready’s instincts were screaming that Leigh was one wrong answer away from gutting him like a fish. “How long?”  MacCready started to talk, then remembered that they were almost certainly being watched. The director- Shaun- might well be listening to them right now. Freaking creep.

“They sent a courser to come get me from Pip’s place, so I took the best option.” He shrugged, playing the person that the Institute would expect him to be— the sort of person who would sell his partner for caps and not think anything of it.

“What are you playing at, MacCready?” Leigh demanded. Ah. He hadn’t realized they were being watched.

“This is my son,” MacCready said, scooting back from the computer screen. “It’s impressive how many places the Institute has cameras in.” MacCready made eye contact, then let his gaze flicker upwards, towards the ceiling panels. “They offered to help me. You can’t turn down that sort of offer. You would have done the same thing. Besides, you joined the Brotherhood of Steel for the _power armor_ , so I don’t see why you’re judging me.” Leigh’s eyebrows lifted. He’d joined the Brotherhood to spy on them, and both of them knew it.

“You scared the shit out of me, you asshole,” Leigh said, and exhaled, clearly trying to calm himself. “And now I don’t even know if it’s you.” Why was Leigh still stuck on this shit? Maybe part of being a spy was constantly suspecting all the people around you.

“I don’t know enough about this oogey-boogey science shit to convince you, Leigh,” MacCready said, abruptly exhausted. “Didn’t we already have this argument? I’m back. I’m here. I came here for you.” Something in Leigh’s expression softened faintly, and he walked over to MacCready. Behind them on the monitor, Duncan was eating a piece of some sort of pie, smearing most of it on his shirt in the process.

“Is that your kid?”

“Yeah,” MacCready said, his throat tight. He reached out and touched the monitor, then turned it off. “Sorry about yours.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Leigh said, and touched the edge of MacCready’s lip with his thumb. “They fixed your teeth.” He said it like very quietly, like it hurt.  

“You would not believe how many operations I have freaking been through in the past few days,” MacCready said, and Leigh smiled. Despite everything- the peculiar scar on his forehead, the scruff, the long hair, the shadows under his eyes- the smile made him look like Leigh again.

They stood a few moments, looking at each other, and then Leigh knelt, the movement putting him face to face with MacCready in his chair. Leigh always inserted himself into MacCready’s personal space like he belonged there, and even now, throat aching with grief, MacCready couldn’t make himself mind.

“I hope you’ll be able to take some time out being an Institute worker to spend some time with me?” Leigh said, voice rough.

“We’ll do it together, whatever it is,” MacCready replied.

“Good,” Leigh said, and bent his head. MacCready was half expecting a kiss, but Leigh put his arms around MacCready and held on like he was afraid MacCready was going to blow away in the wind.

“Sorry,” MacCready whispered. It wasn’t an apology, exactly. It was an acknowledgement that something had broken inside Leigh and MacCready couldn’t fix it or change it. Hadn’t even tried. Had been too focused on himself and his problems to offer Leigh more than a few words and a bullet in a hotel room.

A long silence, and then the rasp of Leigh’s voice.

“Me too,” he said. They stood there a long time, and then Leigh let go of MacCready, a wistful smile on his face.

“Well, I think I’ve blown through my entire yearly supply of emotional honesty in the last two hours, so if you don’t mind I’m going to go take a shower and shave.” It was like a switch had been flipped somewhere, the lights coming on behind Leigh’s eyes all at once. He strode over to the little shower in the corner of the room and started to take off his clothes.

“You’re such a mess,” MacCready said fondly. He turned in his chair and watched Leigh take off his clothes. His shirt came off first, revealing the smooth muscle of Leigh’s stomach and arms, then his pants. There were radiation burns healing on Leigh’s calves. He noticed MacCready looking and smirked, stretching to better display the long lines of his body.  

“I had to mud-wrestle a deathclaw in the Glowing Sea and fuck a courser to get here.”

MacCready rolled up his sleeves, revealing the slashes on his forearms. “I had to fight a Glowing One to get the cure for Duncan.”

Leigh let out a low whistle. “Nice. You should wash those off, you know. Helps them heal faster.” He tilted his head in the direction of the shower, desire warm in his eyes. It sounded like the old Leigh, but there was something new in it- a slight tremor, like he was afraid MacCready would say no. MacCready grinned at him and shrugged out of his coat.

“What is it with you science types and showers?” MacCready asked, getting out of his chair. He rose and went to the bathroom area, tossing his shirt on the bed as he went. Leigh’s appreciative glance made him flush, his skin already warm with the anticipation of caresses.

“They feel good,” Leigh said, watching MacCready take his pants off. “All that hot water and afterwards you feel clean.” He reached out and skimmed his hand down the front of MacCready’s torso to palm the front of MacCready’s boxers. His hand was warm, even through the fabric, and there was just enough pressure to make MacCready want more.

“Confident, aren’t you,” MacCready said, and bit his lip when Leigh pushed against him. “For the record, my gums still hurt from all those damn operations.” Leigh laughed and let go of him, then stepped out of his own boxers with a flourish, his dick already half-hard under the fabric. He stepped into the shower and turned on the hot water, then turned to face MacCready, smirking. Water was running down his chest and along the curve of his hip.

MacCready peeled his boxers off and hastily joined Leigh in the shower. They reached for each other at the same time, Leigh’s hand on the curve of his ass, MacCready’s hand on Leigh’s face, and then they were kissing, grinding breathlessly against each other, carelessly inhaling water as they kissed, sloppy and desperate. They traced each other’s scars, MacCready fascinated by the raised line on Leigh’s forehead, Leigh tracing the burns on MacCready’s neck with his mouth. It had been a month since they’d last fucked- long enough for it to be familiar, long enough for it to feel desperately new. Long enough that Leigh’s touch made MacCready bite down a whine, his eyes closed, pressure already rising in his spine. He’d been wanting Leigh for so long, and trying not to want him, and failing, hating himself and wanting him more and now, finally, here he was, handsome and naked and completely impossible to resist.

“I fucking missed you,” Leigh said, sliding his hand over MacCready’s dick. “Here— turn around.” MacCready did, and Leigh pulled him close, his hand tight around MacCready, his cock heavy  against MacCready’s ass. He bit MacCready’s shoulder and MacCready moaned and pushed against him, wanting more, more contact, wanting Leigh’s mouth against his skin.

“Can I fuck you when we get back to Diamond City?” Leigh said in MacCready’s ear, bending to suck a kiss into the side of MacCready’s neck, his hand warm and tight on MacCready’s dick. The world was beginning to fade under the tide of pleasure, making it impossible to reply. “I would make it good for you,” Leigh said, his voice stuttering as MacCready ground back against him. The warm water felt like fingers on his skin and made it easy to slide against Leigh, to feel how badly Leigh wanted him, his cock sliding against MacCready’s skin. MacCready had never been fucked, but he was willing to believe Leigh when he said that it would be good. It would be like this, Leigh behind him, his hips against MacCready’s ass, his mouth on MacCready’s neck, his dick pushing into him. MacCready came with a stuttered jerk of his hips and Leigh followed, his fingers tight on MacCready’s hip.

They stood a while, panting, the warm water pouring down against them. MacCready was beginning to come around to Leigh’s point of view about warm showers.

“RJ,” Leigh said, sounding utterly wrecked. “I missed you.” They stayed under the water for a long time, clinging quietly to each other, until at last the shower shut off with a squeak, forcing them back out into the sterile Institute room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Shout out to Limiculous for beta'ing this for me. You're the real hero.  
> \- I'm so mad about the Institute intro being literally designed to make you hate the faction! It's fine if you make an evil faction, but you gotta make them cool! The bait and switch with Shaun isn't clever, it just made me want to murder him. ffs.  
> -What did they use Danse for??? Does he send information back to the Institute without knowing it? Does he have periods where he blacks out? Is there a remote control version? How do they activate him? (Shakes Bethesda until answers fall out.)  
> 


	10. watch what you'll say

There was a knock on the door a few minutes after the shower had shut off: Shaun micromanaging as usual. MacCready was on the bed, watching Leigh shave. The month apart had ground at least fifteen pounds off Leigh’s frame, maybe twenty, shrunk his calves and thighs and carved harsh lines into the side of his face. Even so, he was handsome under the Institute lights, and when he heard the knock, he pulled an exaggerated face that made MacCready smile.

Leigh winked and strode over to the door, the towel looped around his waist. “Yes?” 

Shaun, to his credit, didn’t flinch at either the towel or the question. “I went by your quarters, but you weren’t there. I wanted to ask you some questions.”

“These are my quarters,” Leigh said, unmovable. “I’ll be staying with MacCready. Let me finish my shave and I’ll be right out.” I’ll be staying with MacCready, like neither Shaun nor MacCready had any choice in the matter. MacCready felt a stab of something part admiration and part resentment, like a slug of whiskey on an empty stomach. The door clicked shut on Shaun’s startled face, and MacCready laughed. He couldn’t help it. 

“He’s not gonna like that.”

“He can suck it up,” said Leigh, and let out a short, angry huff of breath. Silence. Leigh crossed to the mirror and continued to shave, and then, as though he couldn’t bear not to speak any longer, said. “He has his mother’s mouth.”

He finished his shave in silence and hurried out, leaving MacCready alone in the room. The lights flickered, then went out. MacCready sat for a moment, stunned, then stood. Nothing. The light switch didn’t work. MacCready swore softly under his breath and groped for the pack of smokes that he’d been saving. The flicker of the lighter was unbearably bright in the cavernous darkness, transforming his small prison into a void of indeterminate shape and size. He lit his cigarette and inhaled, the darkness pressing in on all sides, comfort and threat all in one. There were many things he wanted to say, and no one to say them to. It felt like the silence was pushing in on all sides, shoving him face-first down into sleep.  He waited until his cigarette went out, then resentfully pulled the covers over his head. Once again, he was sleeping alone. 

 

A bang on the door startled MacCready awake. His head ached. However much sleep he’d gotten, it wasn’t enough. He slouched from the bed to the door and tried to open it, but the locking mechanism was unresponsive. 

“I can’t unlock it from this side,” he yelled. 

“Noted,” Leigh yelled back. “I’ll be back soon.” MacCready wondered whether Leigh had stashed a sleeping bag in his power armor, and then he wondered how many blows it would take to crumple the door. Probably not many. The door’s steel was thin and he’d seen Leigh crumple sturdier pieces of armor with a single blow from the butt of his rifle. He plodded sleepily to the monitor and flipped it on, but it was late and Duncan was asleep, and the bird was scouting something else. 

A few minutes later a resounding thud announced the return of Leigh’s power armor, and then there were a few minutes of buzzing and electric sounds, until at last the lights flickered and the door slid open, revealing Leigh standing by the door, a welding iron in his hand. 

“Nice,” said MacCready, struggling not to yawn. 

“Wasn’t me,” Leigh said with a shrug, which meant that Shaun or one of his underlings had decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble to keep the two of them apart. MacCready’s lip curled at the thought of Shaun watching them from on high, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it, not yet. Leigh had made a beeline for the bed and was already stripping off his clothes; MacCready crawled in next to him and was instantly enveloped in a hug. Earlier in the day this might have made him angry, Leigh presuming that he could just walk back into MacCready’s life like he hadn’t taken a wrecking ball to everything, but he was sleepy and Leigh’s arms were warm, and it was easier to sleep. 

 

In the morning, a synth woke them with a knock and reported that Shaun and X6 would be by to collect them in fifteen minutes. Leigh, who was always slow in the morning, grunted and shut the door, then slouched over to his clothes and pulled them sleepily on. Some of the obvious exhaustion of the previous day had faded, but he still looked like he could use a day in bed and a few good meals. 

“What happened to your forehead?” MacCready asked. Leigh’s lips quirked up at some private joke. 

“It turns out Doc Crocker was a murderer, but, uh, so am I, and I’ve had more practice.”

“Heh, amateur,” said MacCready and paused, not really sure what to say next. The euphoria from the day before had faded, leaving him feeling strange. It didn’t feel right, exactly, to talk about their separation like Leigh had just been off on a trip, but it would be picking a fight to say anything else. He glanced at Leigh, who was pretending he couldn’t see MacCready looking at him, then went to get his gear. 

When the knock on the door came, Leigh paused, then kissed MacCready on the forehead before opening it. 

“Good morning Shaun, X6.”

“Leigh,” Shaun said with a nod. “I wanted to ask you to look into some things for me. I believe you told my colleague you work in nuclear energy?”

“Fusion cores, mostly in the retention side of things.” He and Shaun fell naturally into step and walked away, X6 and MacCready trailing them. 

“I’ll be serving as your partner until we’re convinced of your efficacy in the field,” X6 said to him. Great, they’d assigned him a babysitter.

“Do we have a mission today?” MacCready asked. 

“Yes,” said X6, and nothing else. They walked in silence, MacCready listening with half an ear to Leigh and Shaun’s technobabble. He couldn’t follow the content, but from the flow of conversation it sounded like Leigh was talking about the work he’d done, and Shaun was asking questions. There was more warmth in Shaun’s voice than MacCready had ever heard, and more coldness in Leigh’s, like he was imitating an Institute scientist. Trying to charm Shaun, probably. 

“So, when do I get to look at the teleporter?” Leigh asked eagerly. 

“Well, that’s very pivotal. The scientists working on it would prefer to keep their work private until you’ve proven that you’re truly loyal to the Institute.”

“Alright,” said Leigh, managing to convey with everything about him that he thought that was eminently reasonable. “So, what do you want me to do? Not to be pushy, but that’s the first real advance in technology I’ve seen in the post-war Commonwealth and I’m really interested. Will you at least tell me what theory it was? Quantum foam? Amplitudehedrons?”

“Amplitudehedrons,” said Shaun, looking amused. “I didn’t realize you’d be familiar.”

“I’m not terribly, but I had a friend in the field in grad school and we would talk sometimes. Regardless, what would you like me to do?” He glanced at MacCready and MacCready thought, this is it. They would ask them to assassinate or kidnap someone and then they would have to go along with it. 

“I was thinking you could help the energy department. They’re interested in your new technique to make fusion cores last longer.”

“You want me to do science?” Leigh said, a slow smile spreading across his face. “That’s new. My pleasure.” Shit, thought MacCready. If they weren’t sending Leigh into the field, it meant MacCready would have to go alone, giving Shaun the perfect opportunity to bump him off. If he wasn’t very mistaken, there were distinct waves of dislike coming off the older man. 

“Were you expecting me to use best nuclear physicist in the Commonwealth as an errand boy?” Leigh snorted. 

“Well, you sent me out into the Commonwealth to murder things for six months in search of my son, so, yes? At this point I’m probably better at violence than physics.” 

“Well, we’ll just have to get you back up to speed.” Shaun said, expression as placid as if he hadn’t heard the first part of the sentence. “Let’s take you to your lab.” There was a slight emphasis on you, which meant that this was MacCready’s cue to follow X6. He stepped reluctantly away from Leigh, who grinned at him and then went off with X6. 

“Today, we’ll be retrieving an escaped synth from a raider camp,” X6-88 said. 

“Righty-o. No problem.” X6 frowned at him. 

“Father was disappointed with your approach when it came to calming Leigh. I hope you do better on this mission.”

“I’m much better at shooting people than I am at talking to them,” MacCready assured him. 

 

They teleported into Libertalia to find a Brotherhood patrol circling overhead.

“Fuck,” hissed MacCready, and ducked behind an old building as the minigun began to shoot. “I can’t let them recognize me. Leigh needs to be able to get back in there later so he can infiltrate.”

“Don’t worry,” X6 said calmly. “I’ll make sure there aren’t any survivors.”

“Well, do it before they radio back!” MacCready hissed. The vertibird was circling. 

“Cover me,” said X6. He took a few steps back, then ran up the side of the wall and landed on the roof in a crouch, easily thirty feet over MacCready’s head. The sound of gunfire shook MacCready from his astonishment and he grabbed a grenade from his belt and hurled it into the vertibird. Smoke filled the air and the minigun began to shoot wildly. MacCready swore and ducked into the warehouse. 

There was a brotherhood scribe in the warehouse. MacCready shot her in the stomach on reflex and then in the face just to make sure. She crumpled to the ground like a doll. Someone else was in the warehouse: some raiders, by the sound of the taunts, and at least one Brotherhood Paladin, by the sound of the armor. MacCready crept behind an old set of crates, his rifle ready. 

There was a heavy thud, something landing on the ceiling. MacCready popped out from behind the crates and shot one of the raiders in the head as he was looking upwards. 

“Nice shot!” exclaimed the paladin, and glanced backwards. “Mercenary. Does that mean Knight Leigh is here?” 

“He’s outside with the back-up,” MacCready said. He waited for her to turn away before shooting her in back of the head. It took three shots for the armor to cave, the metal crumpling in against her skill with a loud crunch.  Her power armor fizzed, the arms twitching, and then came to a halt. MacCready bit down the absurd desire to apologize and scanned the warehouse. Nothing. The raiders were lying on the ground, their bodies peppered with bullets. 

MacCready looked carefully out one of the windows. The vertibird was touching down, X6 at the helm. MacCready hurried onto the vertibird and they took off, the raiders taking potshots. 

“Can you shoot while we move?” X6 yelled over the sound of the blades. 

“No problem,” MacCready yelled back. In truth, he hadn’t done that much shooting from a moving platform, but the raiders on the ground weren’t far. He hooked his arm into one of the holds on the wall, leaned out and began to shoot. The brotherhood had made decent inroads into the raider settlement: there were corpses floating in the water near the bridges. 

MacCready shot down the raiders stupid enough to stand in the open, and then they skimmed down close to the water to give him a good angle on the ones hiding in boats. 

“I can’t swim at all, so don’t crash this thing!” MacCready yelled. 

“Affirmative,” X6 yelled back. There was a high whistling sound, and then the vertibird tilted, splashing MacCready with water. He held onto the bar grimly, and then the vertibird was up and circling behind a building for cover. 

“Shit! One of them on the deck has a missile launcher!” MacCready scrambled to the other side of the vertibird, peppering the deck with shots at random. None of them hit, but they forced the raider with the missile launcher to duck briefly behind cover. MacCready’s gun clicked on empty and he swore and reloaded desperately, knowing he wouldn’t get another shot off before the missile launcher fired. 

“Get ready to move!” MacCready yelled, and X6 swerved wildly, almost sending MacCready careening out of the helicopter. The missile arched overhead and harmlessly fell into the water. 

“That’s not going to work again!” X6 yelled. Do or die, MacCready thought, fumbling for his scope. He lined up the gun and fired in one motion, the bullet cracking the raider's head backwards. Blood splattered on the deck, and MacCready shot another raider as he tried to pikc up his comrade’s weapon. 

“Go higher,” he yelled to X6. The vertibird was smoking and sputtering, but it was still working. X6 took them up and MacCready picked off the raiders on the deck one by one as they tried to make it to the missile launcher. At this height, none of the pipe pistols could hit them. MacCready felt invincible, standing a hundred feet in the air, the wind rushing through his hair as he lined up shot after shot. 

Finally, there was no one left. A bird flew to the helicopter and landed on his rifle. 

“Hey, baby,” MacCready said, amused at the thought of Leigh watching him from the Institute. “Wish you were here, Leigh, but as you can see, we’re doing fine without you.” The bird inclined its head, then flapped away. X6 landed the smoking vertibird on the shore. 

“You’re an exemplary shot,” he said to MacCready, who grinned at him. 

“You’re not so bad yourself. That stunt with the vertibird was awesome.” X6 inclined his head, but there was the barest hint of a smile on his mouth. 

“It seemed tactically advisable,” he said, and shrugged slightly. “Besides, if the Brotherhood insists on circling near high warehouses, I’m happy to show them how flawed their tactics are.” There was a hint of feral pleasure in X6’s voice.

They advanced along the bridges, MacCready picking ammo and stimpacks from the corpses strewn along the way. X6 didn’t participate, but he did help MacCready carry a stash of missiles they found. There was a little tram that ran up to the central raider warehouse. X6 took a few steps back to give himself a running start, then ran up the pole and sprinted easily along the wire, secure as a cat. 

“Show-off,” muttered MacCready, and got into the tram. He watched X6 kill the raiders as the tram ticked lazily along, and then got his shotgun in the off chance there would be someone there when they landed. 

There was one person hiding behind a crate, and they didn’t even notice MacCready coming up behind them. He shot them in the back of the head and started rifling through their pockets. When he looked up, X6 was standing over him. 

“You didn’t help much,” he said. 

“It sure didn’t look like you needed help,” MacCready said, raising an eyebrow. X6 might be scary, but Leigh was worse. 

“You’re right, I didn’t,” X6 said, deadpan, and MacCready laughed. 

“So you do have a sense of humor under all that leather. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

 

X6 walked to the cafeteria with MacCready, where they ate tasteless rations before departing to their rooms, the Institute scientists casting suspicious glances at MacCready. It was late; the meal MacCready had eaten when he’d come back was more dinner than lunch. Leigh was curled up on their bed, reading a scientific journal. 

“Long day?”

“They have stuff here we didn't even have before the war,” Leigh said gleefully, and launched into a spiel about tiny robots called electrons and neutrons. Leigh wasn’t really this easily swayed, was he? They’d killed his wife. MacCready hadn’t understood the impulse to throw your life away studying dusty books before coming to the Institute, and he understood it less now. All their power and security, and they’d used it to make people, which anyone could do with nine months and a little grit. The lack of understanding worried him: what if Leigh succumbed to the atmosphere of this place, fell prey to whatever invisible allure pulled the people here like puppets?

“Hey, Leigh? I really don’t care.”

“Sorry,” said Leigh, looking sheepish. “I saw your stunt with X6. It was pretty excellent shooting. Everyone in the lab was impressed.”

“What, did you have me up on screen while you worked?” Leigh smirked. 

“One of my colleagues looked like she was going to faint when you started popping off those headshots. I’ll admit, it was pretty sexy.”

“You know me, I aim to please,” MacCready said. As long as Leigh was watching him, X6 probably wouldn’t try to murder him on Shaun’s orders and make it look like an accident. “We should rig up a phone line so I can talk dirty to you while you work. You know, liven up the lab a little.” Leigh burst into laughter, looking faintly surprised, like he’d forgotten laughing was an option. 

“Fuckin’ hell. Baby, you must be the cockiest sniper in the Commonwealth. I’ll keep the screens up.” There was something a little feral in Leigh’s face, something that made MacCready wonder how Shaun could ever think that he’d be happy in a lab. “If I can’t go out with you, I can at least watch your back.”

“It’s a good looking back,” MacCready said, and plopped into bed with Leigh. “And yeah, it is the least you can do.”

 

[Mission log, 06/02]Parts retrieved from Saugus Ironworks by MC and X6-88, raiders removed. Mercenary treated for mild burns. 

[Mission log, 06/03] Data retrieved from Boston Public library. 

[Mission log, 06/04] Malfunctioning synth retrieved from swamp. 

[Note, 06/05] Leigh, don’t give my books away. I killed a bunch of super mutants for that copy. More importantly, I had to convince X6 it was worth taking with us. 

[Mission log, 06/06] Malfunctioning synth retrieved from trinity tower.

[Mission log, 06/07] Malfunctioning synth retrieved from Corvega assembly plant. Note from mercenary: Please stop sending me on these missions with X6, or tell him to slow down. I can’t provide fire support if he keeps sprinting several miles ahead of me. 

[Mission log, 06/09] Brotherhood patrol near Pickman gallery dispatched. 

[Field Assessment by unit X6-88, 06/10] Mercenary effective at both short and long range. Estimated likeliness of attempt to escape: 5%.  Compatibility in field: 80%.

 

A little over a week after MacCready had first started going on missions, X6 informed him that the probationary period was over and the Institute had decided to keep him on. 

“Wow, what a surprise. Do I get a raise?”

“I’ll be serving as your partner from now on,” X6 informed him. “If it becomes necessary to lift you in the air, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, buddy,” MacCready said. X6 wasn’t that bad, once you got used to the creeping sensation that he was laughing at you behind his sunglasses and his unfailing desire to murder everything that looked like it could possibly be hard to murder. MacCready liked him better than he’d liked most of the people in the Gunners, but he wasn’t Leigh. 

“Mission tomorrow at 0800,” X6 said, and MacCready grunted and headed back to his room. Another benefit of X6: you didn’t need to care about the social niceties. It was like working with a bear. 

MacCready limped back to his room, his thigh aching from a bit of shrapnel. They’d dug it out and applied stimpacks and painkillers, the province of the rich. The Institute complained a lot about resources, but they were the sort of complaints that only showed how rich the people making them were. Oh, if only running these completely unnecessary cleaning droids didn’t take so much power! Meanwhile, people in the Commonwealth were murdering each other for ten bullets and a tato. 

He slouched into the room and shrugged off his bloody coat.  The missions were beginning to wear on him, day after day of walking and shooting and coming back to the same room late at night, only exchanging a few words before falling into bed. It wasn’t the labor- it was loneliness and the uncertainty. When would this end? 

“Hey,” Leigh said. “I made you dinner.”

“No shit?”

“Whatever happened to not swearing for Duncan?” 

“Shit isn’t a swear word, is it?” Leigh started to laugh. “What? It’s not. What else would you even say there?” Leigh was laughing so hard he was in danger of letting his cup slip off the table. Annoyed, MacCready rescued it and retreated to the dinner table. 

“It’s not like Duncan can hear me,” he muttered, and morosely dug into his food. It was a perfectly fine steak, and MacCready had been hungry enough times in his life to be annoyed with himself for not enjoying it. He had water, and food, and ammo, and if he was still doing dirty and dangerous grunt work, well, that was the only thing he was good for, wasn’t it? You have everything you could possibly want, he told himself viciously, and forced himself to choke down the rest of the steak. 

Everything but a partner, he thought, and hated himself for it. Leigh wasn’t talking to him about whatever he was up to. His only comments on work were inane chatter, the sort of boring thing that Leigh would never have bothered MacCready with normally. But of course, MacCready wasn’t the audience, not really. The audience was Shaun, or whoever job it was to spy on them, and MacCready was just another actor, one whose part was nothing more than to sit there and nod.

The source of MacCready’s annoyance smiled when MacCready looked at him, then looked confused and apologetic. MacCready realized that he’d been glaring. 

“How’s it going?” he muttered. 

“Fine,” Leigh said cautiously. “We’re making good progress on the electrical field.”

“Great,” said MacCready bitterly. “I’m glad you’ve recovered so well.” Leigh had recovered. The two weeks had papered over whatever desperation had haunted him after the submarine, and he was beginning to look like he’d looked two months ago, before everything went to hell. The only thing that remained was a certain carefulness, a reluctance to fight with MacCready. Like now. Leigh looked hurt, really hurt, like MacCready’s bad mood was genuinely affecting him- Leigh, who had walked off being shot on multiple occasions, and once, memorably, with multiple shots, and laughed the whole way back to the nearest settlement. 

“Did something happen at work today?” At work? As if MacCready was some sort of salaryman, and Leigh was his wife. MacCready stared at Leigh in disbelief and then got up to avoid saying anything, went to the sink and stacked up the dishes. He didn’t clean. The unnecessary cleaning droids would do it. 

“My probation period is over,” he said through gritted teeth. 

“Okay,” said Leigh, and walked over. He took a dish from MacCready’s hand, then set it on the counter. “Is there anything I can do?” 

“No,” MacCready muttered. Leigh stepped in closer and took MacCready’s dish gently from his hand, forcing him to look up. MacCready always forgot how much taller than him Leigh was until they were standing next to each other. 

“Are you sure?”

“Dead sure, boss,” MacCready said. He’d meant it partly as a goad, and partly hadn’t meant it at all, but Leigh grinned like MacCready had admitted something incriminating. Maybe he had. 

“Too bad,” said Leigh, and just his proximity made MacCready’s skin feel warm and tight with anticipation. In a flash, he saw the rest of the conversation- the things Leigh would say to him, warm and charming, the way he would put his hand on MacCready’s skin, cautious, and kiss him, the way it would be impossible, as always, to say no. The only way to win was not to play.

MacCready leaned over, grabbed Leigh by the chin and kissed him hard until both of them were breathless. When he let go, Leigh looked faintly stunned. 

“What are you---?”

“I’m just skipping to the end, Leigh,” MacCready said, and kissed him again. 

“We don’t have to,” Leigh said, but his hands were on MacCready’s sides, under his shirt, warm on his skin. 

“Of course we don’t have to,” MacCready said, and pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on the ground. “But we want to, no matter how much it costs us, and we’re not going to stop now.” 

 

Afterwards, MacCready rolled onto his side and tried not to think. His skin was crawling, and he felt satisfied and unhappy all at once, like an addict who’d just shot up and was just waiting for the high to kick in. Behind him, Leigh shifted, then rose. There was the sound of Leigh padding to the kitchen, and of some water being poured into a cup, and then Leigh returned and quietly set the water down where MacCready could get it if he wanted it. 

“Why are you being so damn sweet and shit?” MacCready demanded. 

“I’ve always been like this. Why do you mind?”

“It’s weird, Leigh. You were...you can’t just walk in here and act all cuddly, like it’s going to make up for everything.”

“I’m not doing it to make up for anything,” Leigh said quietly. “I’m doing it because I missed you.” Well, that made MacCready feel like a piece of shit.

“Well, stop,” MacCready said bitterly, not sure why he was so angry. It was the Institute. It was the whole situation, the bright lights, the way no one talked to him but Leigh and X6, the way he could see Duncan anytime but not touch him, the way he’d given himself irrevocably to Leigh and the other man hadn’t even noticed. 

“If I could just stop, I wouldn’t be here,” Leigh said, and slid into bed next to MacCready. The fire in his face from earlier was gone, but there was a tenderness in it that was somehow worse. MacCready debated himself for a moment, then gave up and rested his head on Leigh’s shoulder, let Leigh put his arm around him.

“You were gonna shoot me,” MacCready muttered. Leigh was silent, his thumb moving in soothing circles against MacCready’s skin, and then he shrugged a little.

“I was going to shoot myself, too. Almost did. But that’s not your fault, or your problem.” He sighed, then turned to look at MacCready, staring intently into his face. “I’m sorry. I know, I haven’t been a very good partner to you lately. But I’ll make it up to you. Whatever you want, I will find it for you. However many raider dens you get yourself trapped in, I will get you out.”

“I hate that you can do this,” MacCready said, not sure whether his contempt was for himself or for Leigh. “Just look me in the eye and make me believe whatever you want.”

“I’m as capable of telling the truth as anyone else, but you don’t have to believe me.” Leigh’s voice was low and intent, his face handsome even in the neon glare of the Institute lights. Strange, that the lights that stripped MacCready down to scars and skin made Leigh look better. No, not strange at all: Leigh had been made for the spotlight. 

“What, let me guess? You’re going to show me?” Leigh looked hurt for a second, and then it vanished. Whatever crack had opened in him after the submarine was closed now, and his thoughts were hidden again, boarded up in some secret place inside of him. 

“Yeah, I am,” he said, and flicked MacCready’s ear. “I’ll bet you 200 caps.”

“200 caps,” said MacCready, scoffing. “You don’t care about 200 caps. You probably have 200 caps in your couch cushions.”

“2000 caps,” Leigh suggested, smirking. “Get ready to buy me a lot of beer.” MacCready shook his head, then laughed, unwillingly. No matter how hard he struggled, there was a large part of him that longed to sit next to Leigh and feel his warm arm across his shoulders, longed to kiss him and tell him stupid jokes. There was something that vacillated in his heart, something that went back and forth between wanting to be cautious and just wanting to believe that his luck was finally turning around, that he was at last worth something to someone again. 

He loved Leigh, but he didn’t trust him, not yet, not with everything that happened. But if Leigh could pull them out of this, could fix it, then he’d believe. Until then, he’d hold position and survive. He’d done it before. 

“I think you’re full of shit,” he told Leigh, and scooted in under his arm, leaned his head on Leigh’s shoulder. “But I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.” 

 

[Note, 6/12, from Dr. Dos Santos to Leigh. “Great party! Thank MacCready for the steak!”]

 

X6 walked with MacCready back to his room after the mission was over, still stubbornly insisting that laser weapons were better than plasma ones because the ammo was more reliably sourced. 

“All I’m saying is, if they have the resources to leave these damn lights running all the time, they can damn well give you and the other Coursers better weapons. Come on.”

“The Bureau knows what they’re doing, MacCready. Don’t let your enthusiasm for new weapons crowd your judgement.” MacCready snorted and punched the button to open the door to his room. 

“Don’t let your obedience cloud yours. I’m just calling it like I see it.” The door slid open befor X6 could reply, revealing Leigh seated at a dining room table, of all things, surrounded by confused looking scientists. X6 straightened, his chin going up and his shoulders going back, like he was facing a firing squad. 

“I see you started the party without me,” MacCready said, staring at Leigh. 

“Sorry, I didn’t know when you would get home,” Leigh said. “Why don’t you clean up, and I’ll serve you a plate.” MacCready remembered abruptly that there was mirelurk splattered across his shirt, and fuck the scientists for staring, it wasn’t his fault that he was the only one with a real job in the whole damn Institute. He said goodbye to X6, then headed self-consciously to the shower. The scientists were talking about some shit that didn’t make any sense, and MacCready’s finger was doing the trigger twitch it did when he was angry and trying not to be. 

“You can’t shoot the damn scientists,” he muttered to himself. He could shoot Leigh, though, or at least yell at him. Later, though. Right now, he had to go out and smile, because Leigh was angling for something and, as usual, it was MacCready’s job to play along. He got out of the shower, shrugged on his clothes and headed out into the living room. 

It got quiet when he came out and then loud, everyone trying to pretend they weren’t looking at him.

“So, what’s going on?” he asked, and sat down next to Leigh. 

“We’re eating your steaks,” Leigh said, and put his hand on MacCready’s leg under the table. “It’s in a good cause, though. I’m trying to convince them it would be worth it to bring some fresh meat down here.”

“Well, in that case,” MacCready said, and took a bite of the meat. He’d been smuggling food down every chance he got, because the Institute rations might be healthy but they tasted like cave fungus.

“Huh, this isn’t half bad. Not as good as when I make it, but it’s hard to mess up a good steak.”

“You cook?” one of the scientists asked, and what, did they think that up on the surface they ate all their food raw?

“Of course I cook,” said MacCready. “I thought Leigh was the only person who didn’t. You gotta make your meat safe to eat somehow.”

“That’s smart,” the scientist said, like it wasn’t basic knowledge, and turned to one of her comrades with a smirk. “We’ve all seen your work on the screens. Maria here is a real fan.” Leigh snorted and moved his hand slightly further up MacCready’s thigh and wow, MacCready had not expected this kind of a dinner. The girl being hassled was pretty enough, with brown skin that was currently red from embarrassment and long, dark hair. MacCready decided to spare her from further harassment. 

“I’m pretty great at my job, so she’s not even wrong. You’re all welcome for the steaks, by the way. Sorry about Leigh’s cooking.”

“Hey,” Leigh protested, elbowing him in the side. 

“I’m way better and you know it,” MacCready said, elbowing him back. 

The rest of the night, to MacCready’s surprise, went well. It had been weeks since he’d talked to anyone other than Leigh or X6 for any significant amount of time, and he’d forgotten how fun it was. Maria turned out to be a fan of the Grognak comics, and they talked past issues while Leigh and the others chatted excitedly about energy flow or something equally dumb. 

Finally, the party ended. Leigh waved out the last pair of people, smiling, then turned to MacCready, the animation draining out of his face like water spilling from a smashed cup.

“God, I thought they would never leave.”

“You did it to yourself, you know.”

“I’m trying to make friends,” Leigh muttered, and thumbed a piece of hair wearily from MacCready’s forehead. “If we’re going to stay here,” deep sigh, wink, “we might as well make the best of it. Speaking of, I don’t like how often Shaun’s been sending you off. I’ll ask him to reduce your work schedule.”

“I didn’t realize that was an option,” MacCready muttered mutinously. It wasn’t, of course, not for him. Leigh could ask for whatever he wanted, because he was Leigh, and MacCready was stuck with whatever scraps he could get. The reminder that Leigh had more control over his life than he did struck him like a slap across the face, but MacCready was too tired and full to pick a fight, so he settled for shaking his head and climbing silently into bed. 

They slept mashed up against each other, as usual, the closeness grating on MacCready’s nerves. Leigh’s arms were warm in the cavernous cold of the Institute, but they were beginning to feel like just another bar on the cage around MacCready’s life. 

 

[Mission Log, 06/13] Mission Failed. Malfunctioning Unit 06-21 and 35-07 decommissioned in field. 

The mission the next day was light, easy synth retrieval and a small supplies run. X6 met him at the weapons station and asked stiffly whether they’d made sure to check the meat for contamination before serving it to Institute scientists. 

“X6, buddy, people survived on meat for like 2000 years before you guys came along with your horrible food rations. Leigh’s not as good at cooking as yours truly, but he’s not going to poison anyone.” 

“There’s no reason to take unnecessary risks.”

“I saw you run up the side of a deathclaw,” MacCready sniped back. “Don’t talk to me about unnecessary risks.”

“I was fine,” X6 deadpanned, smug. 

“So, if the scientists are fine afterwards, it’s okay?”

“Let’s focus on the mission,” X6 said, which meant that MacCready had won that round. They stepped onto the teleportation pad, MacCready idly twirling his pistol, and waited for the all-clear. After about the third time, teleporting had stopped being interesting and turned into a typical part of his morning, wedged between breakfast and murder. A beep on the pad, and then they were standing outside in the muggy morning air. 

“Come on,” said X6, and trotted off like he was still annoyed about the meat. MacCready trailed after him, jogging lazily, his rifle ready to fire. He caught up to X6 near the river, where he was interrogating a raider. 

“Hey,” MacCready drawled, nice and slow. “You caught one.” He grinned at the two of them. It was so, so easy to play good cop, bad cop with X6. “He squeal yet?”

“No,” X6 said, bored. “But he will.”

“Aw, come on. Let me have a turn.” X6 grunted, then got up and walked a few steps back, glowering. MacCready knelt beside the raider. From the stink of burnt flesh, X6 had nailed him several time with his pistol. MacCready rifled through his front pocket, dug out a smoke, and lit it. 

“What do you fucking want?” the raider asked, watching the flame warily. Smart one. Good. The smart ones usually talked. 

“You know,” MacCready said around his cigarette. “Someone ran off on us. We don’t take that lightly.  _ Where did they go _ ?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because if you tell me, I get to beat X6’s record in interrogations, and that means I let you live. If X6 has to beat it out of you, well, not so much.” He hummed and breathed in, enjoying the cigarette immensely. It had been too long. 

“MacCready,” X6 said, and nothing more. MacCready pulled his pistol, still humming, and jammed it against the raider’s forehead.

“Time’s up,” he said, grinning. “So, what’s it gonna be?”

 

The synth was in Hangman’s Alley, blended in with the settlers. MacCready frowned at the turrets he’d helped Leigh set up and swatted down X6’s arm when he raised it to fire. 

“Relax, buddy.” Being friendly to X6 was a bit like poking a sleeping deathclaw, which meant that MacCready couldn’t stop doing it. “We can go find some radscorpions for you to fist-fight later. No point in murdering a bunch of innocent settlers.” X6 lowered his arm and gave MacCready a suspicious stare. 

“You know the people here?”

“Leigh and I helped set up the settlement. You know, if you change your clothes, no one will know who you are.”

“Where do you propose I get clothes?”

“From a corpse, like everyone else.”

“I’ll stay out here,” X6 said, folding his arms. 

“Suit yourself,” said MacCready. He hummed, put away his gun and marched up to the gate, holding his hands in the air. “MacCready at the gate,” he yelled. A woman popped her head over the barricades. 

“Do I know you?”

“I hope so, since I helped Leigh build this place,” MacCready shouted back. Another head appeared to look him over, and then the gates swung open. 

 

It had been a while since MacCready had been in a settlement. There was– god bless– a bar and a restaurant, some workbenches and a bunch of chairs piled around a firepit. A woman, shell-shocked and pale looking, was sitting next to the fire, hugging her knees. Bingo. MacCready smiled to himself, then headed to the bar and ordered a beer. 

“Heard you and Leigh broke up,” the bartender said suspiciously. 

“We made up,” MacCready assured her. “It wasn’t serious. No one even got shot.” The bartender snorted. 

“Well, that’s alright then. Listen, don’t break up with him again. He looked just about ready to die the last time he came through, wouldn’t talk to anyone, big scar across his face. You do that?” MacCready shook his head. 

“Good. Now, I don’t know you, but I know that if you ever hurt him, you’ll never get a drink from a single Minuteman settlement again. Here’s your beer.” 

“Thanks,” MacCready said dryly. He slapped his money on the counter, then headed over to the firepit to talk to the caravan traders. 

“MacCready,” one of them said, and slapped the couch next to him. MacCready had been a caravan guard for few months when he’d first reached the Commonwealth, and made a couple of friends before quitting like an idiot and running off to join the Gunners. He recognized three of the four people: the two guards, Ala and V-T and the merchant, Bones. The fourth was new, some guy with sunglasses and a pompadour wig. He gossiped with them for a while, talking business, the tato harvest, the brotherhood of steel, settlements, Daisy. Goodneighbor had recently celebrated some kind of pre-war holiday dedicated to drugs, and word on the vine was that Piper and Cait were looking for Leigh. Did MacCready know where he was?

“I’m afraid not,” MacCready said, making a face. “I’ve been doing some mercenary work these past few weeks, and that’s why I’ve been out.” He lowered his voice. “I heard that there was a synth on the run from the Institute,” he said. 

“God- here?” MacCready nodded, let his eyes flicker towards the campfire. The caravan guards turned pale, but the merchant just leaned in, like MacCready had mentioned a particularly interesting bit of gossip. 

“What are you looking for one of those things for?” 

“Brotherhood of Steel wants one,” MacCready said. “Also, Leigh’s worried about a Courser tearing up his settlement looking for it.”

“What’s it look like?”

“Looks like a woman, blond hair, brown eyes, about my height. I don’t want to make a scene– do you think I could just talk to her in private?”

“You being straight with us, MacCready?”

“Absolutely,” MacCready said. “I won’t pretend I haven’t done some shady things, but I’m not in the business of kidnapping innocent people. Never have been, never will be. I’m not some fucking Triggerman.” The caravan guards glanced at the merchant, who studied MacCready for a bit. 

“No,” he agreed. “You’re not.”

They arranged for MacCready to sit next to the woman at the fire while everyone else talked at the bar. Her jaw twitched when MacCready sat down and for a moment he thought she was going to run. 

“I didn’t think you’d find me so fast,” she said, not looking at him. A child was asleep on her lap. “Is he here, too?” Her voice was tired, cracking with hatred and fear. There was only one person he could be. 

“He’s outside,” MacCready said. Her face trembled and a tear slid down her cheek. 

“I don’t suppose you’d consider leaving Sasha behind,” she whispered. “Please. They’re going to decommission her.” Her voice broke. Sasha? Her hand was stroking the hair of the girl in her lap. “She doesn’t even know she’s a synth. She thinks she’s my ten year old sister.”

They’d told MacCready there were two synths. They hadn’t mentioned that one of them was a kid. MacCready hadn’t liked bringing in the other ones, hadn’t seen why the Institute couldn’t just leave them, it wasn’t as though they couldn’t just make more. He hadn’t understood, not really. Hadn’t thought about it. MacCready was an expert in not thinking about it: you had to be, if you didn’t want to go insane.

“If I don’t take you back, X6 comes in here. And if X6 comes in here, he’s going to kill everyone,” MacCready said quietly. 

“Why are their lives worth more than mine?”

“Why is your life worth more than everyone else here?” Another tear escaped down her face. 

“Kill me, then,” she said, finally turning to face him. Her eyes were very blue, her skin smudged with dirt, a little streak of blood smeared across one cheekbone. “Please. I won’t be a slave, not ever again.” The fire was flickering, trembling in the wind. By the time the storm blew in, punishing the land with green strikes of lightning, this woman would be nothing more than a corpse. MacCready felt a sudden powerful stab of resentment for the Institute, for Leigh, for everyone sitting back in their silver fortress blithely unaware of the misery that haunted the world. 

“A dose of Med-X will knock your girl out,” he said quietly. “Shoot yourself and I’ll bring X6 the body, tell him you killed the both of you when you saw me.”

“Why shouldn’t I shoot you?” 

“Because your sister is dead if you do that, and you’re her family, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” the synth said, her voice cracking. “I am.”

 

Her corpse was lighter than MacCready had expected. 

Failed missions required a briefing. MacCready stood, numb, and explained that the woman had shot herself, and that it was his fault. He apologized for making the call that X6 shouldn’t go in, his fingers twitching on his gun, then went back to his room. There was an awful and pervading silence in his head. He went into the room that had become his prison and turned on the fan, then sat on the floor, unmoving. 

What could he have done? Nothing. X6 would have gotten her. 

He could have shot X6, and then the Institute would have shot Duncan, probably, and MacCready didn’t have it in him to do that. Not for anyone. Not for even for Leigh. 

If he’d known, when he decided to come back, that he was putting Duncan in danger, he wouldn’t have come. It was one thing to to put yourself in danger, one thing to decide on your own death, and another thing to do it to someone innocent. But that was the whole point of the Institute, wasn’t it? Innocence redefined. As long as you weren’t doing the killing yourself, you could pretend that it had nothing to do with you, like you hadn’t driven the synths to run with the prick of your needle. 

Leigh came in at some point and stopped, staring at MacCready. 

“Are you injured?”

“Bad mission today,” MacCready managed. His throat hurt. He’d never wanted a beer worse in his whole life. 

“Do you need anything?”

“About six beers and some freaking whiskey,” MacCready said. “And a week off.”

“I can ask–”

“Don’t fuc- don’t goddamn ask, Leigh. What would I even do in here for a week? Sit in my room? Talk to your friends at work?” MacCready laughed. “Just get out of here. Go sit in whatever big room Shaun put together for you, and leave me alone.”

“No,” said Leigh. 

“Go fuck yourself,” MacCready said. “I’m stuck in here because of you.”

“So am I,” said Leigh, very quietly. “What did you do, MacCready?”

“I failed the mission,” MacCready said contemptuously. “Some synth girl blew her head off in front of me. Are you worried, Leigh? Scared that I’m going to ruin your plan to make friends with everyone here?”

“Shut up, MacCready.” It was the first time Leigh had sounded anything other than soft and conciliatory in weeks. “Last week, I shook hands with the man who ordered the operation that killed my wife. He was twenty-one when it happened, just starting out at the synth bureau, and it was a minor operation. Unimportant.” There was a clipped, feral rage in Leigh’s voice. “No one cared about the casualties.”

“Why don’t you do something about it, then?” MacCready asked. 

“I am,” Leigh said in a strained voice. He knelt next to MacCready and put his hand on MacCready’s shoulder, formed it into the shape it would make if he had his finger on a trigger. “I’m trying to live here. I’m trying to carry on what my wife would have wanted.” When he said the last words, he tapped his trigger finger against MacCready’s forehead. “Don’t screw it up for me.”

“Fine,” MacCready said, and slapped his fingers away. “Just don’t expect me to be happy about it. I’m fucking sick of being trapped in this prison. I need a beer, and a day to do nothing. I’m not a scientist. I didn’t sign up to give the Institute my whole life.” They stared at each other in the awful, merciless brightness. 

“I’ll get you some time off,” Leigh said, deliberate. “Just hold on a little longer.”

“Don’t lecture me on how to survive, Leigh.” 

 

[Mission Log, 06/14-15] Supplies retrieved from Quincy.

[Field Assessment by unit X6-88, 06/15] Mercenary extremely familiar with Gunner tactics, very effective against them. Estimated likeliness of attempt to defect, 4%. Mercenary expressed desire to “go back to Diamond City for a while, talk to Cait.” Do not believe mercenary will defect as long as we have Duncan secured. 

 

The next mission lasted two days, which gave MacCready a little time to cool off. They were going into Quincy, which didn’t make him feel any less sick or guilty, but meant that he at least had the pleasure of killing his former commander. There was a kind of peace in vengeance, more real and true than anything philosophy could offer. The man had given the order to kill everyone in Quincy, and now he was dead. MacCready couldn’t undo the order or put the bullets back in his gun, but he could stop his voice from ever making another command. 

MacCready returned to the Institute bitterly calm, his desire for a fight distilled into acid resentment. He’d joined the Gunners again, or something worse, and there was nothing for it but to see it through. It was getting to be a habit, really: joining organizations and then murdering his way out. He was turning into a good match for Leigh. 

He headed for Leigh’s lab, not really sure what he was going to do until he got there. Leigh’s lab was a small, white space with three other people in it, and all of them looked alarmed when they saw MacCready come in. Leigh looked alarmed too, for a split second, and then he smiled, big and obvious. Here’s the con, his smile said. Play along. 

“Back from work early, babe?” Leigh asked. 

“You know it,” he replied. “I’m not going to let some second rate-Gunners get in my way.”

“Wouldn’t expect anything else from you,” Leigh said, affection clear in his voice. He stepped closer and put his hand possessively on MacCready’s back. 

“Have you met my colleagues?” MacCready had not. He met them now, with a round of nervous handshakes. Leigh obviously wanted these people to like him, but why?

“This is Doctor Li, and Dr. Ayo. Dr. Li works in Advanced Systems, and Dr. Ayo runs the Synth Retention Bureau.” This was the evil bastard who’d sent MacCready out to grab all the synths. It would take five seconds to shoot him between the eyes, another couple for everyone else in the room. Leigh’s grip on the back of MacCready’s jacket jerked him back to the present, where Dr. Ayo was still speaking.  

“...X6 has told me about you in his reports. I admit, at first I though you wouldn’t collaborate well, but now X6 seems insistent on working with you.”

“What can I say, I’m just that good.” Leigh relaxed slightly and let go of the death grip he’d had on the back of MacCready’s coat. MacCready resisted the urge to elbow him in the ribs. “X6 is no slacker himself. Now, if you could just order him to leave me alone about my beer and cigarettes.”

“Those things will kill you, you know,” Dr. Ayo said, and laughed.

“I can only hope,” MacCready said, and took a pack out of his pocket. “You want one?”

 

Leigh found him at the firing range a few hours later, getting hand to hand lessons from X6. He was getting his ass kicked, but that was fine. The point of the lesson was to make him concentrate, and nothing made you concentrate like knowing that X6 was going to break your nose if you didn’t pay attention. 

“X6,” Leigh called, and X6 stopped and leaned back, still watching MacCready. “Can I have my boyfriend back?”

“He’s all yours, sir,” X6 said. 

“How come you never call me sir?” MacCready asked. X6 looked at him and then walked off. “He’s really quite fond of me,” he said to Leigh. “This is how he shows his affection. What’s up?”

“We’re going back to the Commonwealth,” Leigh said. MacCready resisted the urge to whoop and pump his fist into the air, but only barely.

“Really? What are we doing?”

“We’re going to redirect some Minutemen supplies to places where the Institute can pick them up, grab some intel on the Brotherhood of Steel, then grab some stuff from the Capital Wasteland.”

“Duncan?” MacCready said, his voice wavering. 

“Not exactly, unless you want to?” MacCready shook his head. 

“Could we visit him, at least?”

“Sure,” said Leigh. 

“Well, what are we waiting for, then?”

“They were going to let us sleep here for the night.”

“We can sleep in Diamond City!” MacCready said, and Leigh’s face softened, broke into a helpless grin. 

“Okay.”

 

The relay dumped them directly in Leigh’s living room. MacCready made a beeline for the fridge to grab a beer, while Leigh fired up a power generator, turned on all the fans, and set the radios to different stations. 

“What are you doing?” MacCready asked, and drained half the beer in a single swig. 

“Making some white noise,” Leigh mouthed, stripping his shirt off his head. He shrugged out of his pants, then looked deliberately at MacCready. 

“Fine, fine,” MacCready said, and stripped out of his coat, then finished his beer. When he went upstairs, Leigh was sitting on the bed in his boxers, a handle of vodka in his hand. This, MacCready thought, in a moment of perfect clarity, is going to be amazing or a disaster. He dumped his clothes in the living room, pulled on a pair of old jeans, then bounded up the stairs. 

It was noisy, all the sound blended together into a single rush that might as well have been silence. Leigh didn’t speak, only looked at him, his gaze heavy and obvious, as scorching as radiation. MacCready glared back at him, determined not be ashamed or intimidated. His pistol was in the living room. Fine. This fight wouldn’t be lost or won by weapons. 

“You’re kind of paranoid, you know that, right?” 

“I’m a professional,” Leigh said, and there was that cold tone, the one MacCready hadn’t heard since the fight on the bridge. “I’m not going to fuck up _ now _ . Those bitches have no idea what it’s like not to live in a cage, so they don’t get why anyone would want to leave.” MacCready felt a wild grin spreading across his face: this what was he’d been craving, the person he’d been missing. His partner. He climbed into Leigh’s lap and kissed him with all the anger and relief in his body, his teeth scraping against Leigh’s lip. 

“I fucking missed you.” Leigh stared up at him, his face strangely blank, his breathing coming fast. 

“No kidding. That would have been good to know.” He breathed in, once, like he was trying to restrain himself, then visibly let go. “I stormed the fucking Institute for you, and you had the nerve to blame me for not getting you out fast enough.”

“I wouldn’t have been in the fucking Institute if I hadn’t come back for you! Besides, what was I supposed to think? You act like whatever’s most convenient– how should I know what’s real and what’s a game?” Leigh grabbed MacCready by the forearms when he tried to get up, holding him in place. 

“You can’t blame me for that!” They glowered at each other, and then Leigh let go of MacCready and leaned backwards in a gesture half surrender and provocation. “I’m sorry,” he bit off. “But give me some credit. I was ready to die for you. I was ready to blow up the fucking Institute for you, to let them kill my son for you. I let you put a loaded pistol in my stomach with your finger on the trigger.”  
“So what?”

“So, you didn’t shoot. You want to claim you don’t trust me? Bullshit.”

“I know you,” said MacCready and Leigh flinched. MacCready’s heart was pounding like he was in a firefight, and everything felt fast and sharp and clear. He grinned. “I know better than to trust what you say.”

“And yet, you’re still in my lap.”

“I am,” drawled MacCready, and watched the hope dawn on Leigh’s face. “You did get us out.” It was a power trip, being wanted so badly. It felt like victory, the kind MacCready had been scared to believe in since Lucy died, the kind where you won something that couldn’t be taken from you. The urge to grab a handful of Leigh’s hair and kiss him had become irresistible, a terrible pressure on MacCready’s back. Last chance to run, MacCready thought, giddy, and laughed. Be honest with yourself, MacCready: you were past the point where you could run weeks ago, maybe months, maybe as soon as he kissed you. This is just you making him sign for the last piece of the package. 

“I did,” Leigh said. “I will. Every time.” MacCready kissed him. One, two seconds of surprise from Leigh, and then they were tangled together, kissing breathlessly, Leigh’s hands on his ass, pulling him closer. It felt more like victory than surrender, like his whole body was burning. 

“I’m sorry too,” MacCready said when they parted, gasping for breath. “I just couldn’t stand it, seeing you pretend like that. I wanted you. I missed you. X6 isn’t the same.”

“You can’t– you can’t always react like that when I’m on a mission,” Leigh said. He was also breathing hard, and it made the muscles in his neck and chest rise and fall when he spoke. MacCready dug his hand hard enough into Leigh’s shoulder to make him hiss. 

“I won’t,” MacCready said, and grinned. “I played along, eventually. I’m not against running a con. But I have to know, absolutely know, that you’re going to tell me what’s happening eventually.”

“Okay,” said Leigh. 

“You’re not planning to tell me shit,” MacCready said, stroking the side of Leigh’s face. Leigh looked faintly petulant, and it made MacCready smile. “If I find out you’re running a mission without me, I’ll ruin your cover, and to hell with the consequences. I’m not against letting everyone know you like I do.”

“You’ve got more on the line here than I do, MacCready.”

“I’m not talking about the Institute,” MacCready said, mildly. “I meant the Brotherhood.” Leigh scowled at him and MacCready laughed, too delighted to feel really annoyed about anything, and slid one of his thumbs under the edge of Leigh’s boxers. “You don’t have to tell me now,” he said, and Leigh scowled and flipped them onto the bed in a movement that knocked the breath from MacCready’s body. 

“Oh, did you want to skip to the good part?” MacCready said, and was silenced with a kiss that made his whole body hot with interest, his dick hardening uncomfortably in his boxers. He arched against Leigh, pushing their bodies together and bit his lip and tried not to moan when Leigh slid his boxers down and started to touch him. He only realized his eyes had been closed when Leigh stopped touching him and slid his hands upwards to pin MacCready to the bed by his forearms. It was almost like a caress to open his eyes and feel the weight of Leigh’s stare, his gaze like a fuse held against MacCready’s skin. 

“What do I get out of following all these rules?” he asked, voice low and purring with menace. MacCready smirked, and wiggled a little, not really trying to escape, only reminding Leigh that he could still move. 

“Me, of course,” he said. 

“Oh?” said Leigh, and smirked, then got up and walked off the bed. 

“What?” said MacCready. He lay on the bed for a stunned moment, then sat up. Leigh was looking through his bedside table: he caught sight of MacCready’s facial expression and burst into laughter. 

“You fucker,” MacCready said, embarrassed. 

“Not yet,” Leigh said cheerfully, and held up a small bottle of some clear fluid, then started to slick up his fingers. 

“What’s that?” asked MacCready, then remembered what Leigh had said about wanting to fuck him and flushed, his face turning hot. 

“I’ll give you three guesses,” Leigh said, climbing onto the bed. He ran his hand down MacCready’s side, touching the curve of his hip, the flat front of his stomach and then grinned, mischievous, like he’d just gotten Piper to believe some outrageous lie or another. 

“Hmpf. Well, get on with it.” Leigh’s eyebrows went up and he leaned over, kissing MacCready, one hand gripping MacCready’s dick and the other sliding lower. MacCready’s breath hitched a little when the first finger slipped in. 

“Shh,” said Leigh gently, like MacCready was some kind of delicate Diamond City girl in need of soothing. MacCready bit the side of his neck in retaliation. 

“I’m not made of glass,” he said, and got another finger for his trouble. The first push brushed against something inside of him, something that made his shoulders go slack and toes curl. He forced them back open. Leigh was studying his face. MacCready grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled him back into a kiss, determined not to give Leigh the satisfaction of taking him apart so easily.  

A third finger. MacCready’s whole body was beginning to feel warm and tender, and his voice was escaping from his throat in little gasps as Leigh’s fingers slid in and out of him. Leigh was kissing him now, tasting him in little bites. 

“Come on,” MacCready said, and Leigh drew back from him, taking his fingers out and starting to slick up his cock. Fuck, thought MacCready, and grinned at Leigh. He was almost painfully hard and his heart was thumping in his chest, but there was no fun in letting Leigh see that. He slid down the bed onto his back and stretched, yawning, like he was about to go to sleep. He’d be fucked if he knew what Leigh found attractive about his skinny, scarred-up body, but he couldn’t deny it, not with that hungry look on Leigh’s face. 

“You going to get on with it, or what?”

“You really have no idea when to stop, do you?” Leigh said, and tossed the bottle aside. MacCready's heart felt like it was going to pound out of his chest, like he was about to fire the first bullet in a fire-fight, a feeling half trepidation and half delight. Leigh arranged himself over MacCready and pushed in gently, the sensation sudden and overwhelming. MacCready bit his lip to keep from whining; Leigh’s dick couldn’t possibly be that much bigger than his fingers, but it felt bigger. He felt like he he had a fever, like he was burning, his fingers digging into the covers as he tried to hold himself together just a little bit longer. 

“Relax,” said Leigh and bent over, placing a series of kisses on MacCready’s shoulders and neck. MacCready barely felt them. A few more seconds, and then whatever threshold was necessary to change from pleasure to pain was passed, and MacCready gasped, eyes squeezed shut, pleasure shooting through his body like a bolt of lightning.

“Fuck,” he said, and pushed himself down all the way on Leigh’s cock. He and Leigh groaned in concert, and then Leigh was moving, sliding, each snap of his hips unbearably good, MacCready’s whole body moving to the rhythm of the thrusts. MacCready was vaguely conscious that Leigh’s fine control had snapped, finally, because he was getting plowed, fucked like they were going to die, but he didn’t really care. The distant flash of pain was nothing more than a garnish, a side-note to the pleasure lighting up all his nerves.  

“Leigh,” he gasped, and was rewarded with a biting kiss on his neck that made him moan and rock his hips back. Leigh’s forearm was over his own, pressing him down into the mattress, amazing, inescapable. MacCready slid his hand over his own dick once, twice, and then came, vaguely aware that Leigh was still fucking him. He was just barely coming back into focus when Leigh groaned and pushed into him, shuddering, and then went still. 

MacCready watched the focus come back into Leigh’s face, his eyelids fluttering and then opening at last. When he saw MacCready staring, he grinned, pulled out, and flopped onto the mattress next to him. 

They lay there for a bit, breathing heavily. MacCready’s skin was still hot, his nerves prickling, and he felt exposed, like Leigh had managed to get through some essential last bit of his defenses. He rolled onto his side, where he could keep his face hidden, and Leigh caught him with a warm arm around his side. Silence. MacCready was tired, his body perfectly warm and heavy with afterglow, and he had almost fallen asleep when Leigh spoke. 

“I’ve been wanting to do that since the fucking Gunners’ overpass,” Leigh said, his voice low and rough in MacCready’s ear. He kissed the back of MacCready’s neck gently and pulled him in a little closer, so his body was flush against MacCready’s. 

“Really?” MacCready asked sleepily. 

“Yeah. Next time, hurry up.” MacCready elbowed him lightly in the ribs and Leigh laughed. 

“The Gunners’ overpass, why?” Leigh laughed softly. 

“You set up a perfect ambush, killed your former coworkers, insisted on giving me back my caps, and then you got all blushy when I kissed you. You have a sweet personality for the line of work you’re in. It makes you interesting.”

“If I had known all the trouble I was going to get into, I would have kept the caps,” MacCready said, and turned around to tuck his head under Leigh’s chin. 

“Please,” said Leigh. “Think of all the sex we still haven’t had. We have so much time to make up for. The table, the wall, the sofa…”

“Please,” retorted MacCready, and turned over so he was facing Leigh. “I had something more interesting in mind.”

“Oh?”

“Tell me what you’re planning for the Institute,” he whispered. 

“What do you know,” said Leigh, and smiled, slow and full of promise. “That is more interesting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Sorry about the long delay! Work has been kicking my ass.  
> \- In case anyone's interested, Leigh's wife Davi guest-stars in my new fic "The Body Electric."  
> -Not pictured: Leigh's loud, continuous internal screaming about everything in the Institute. As a counterpoint to MacCready dragging people back to be brainwashed, he gets to have the "privilege" of helping with the brainwashing procedure.  
> -MacCready and X6 make a great bad cop, worse cop duo. In a very different world, the Institute hired MacCready before he met Leigh and the two of them went on to scare the shit out of the Commonwealth and probably murder everyone. MacCready has a childish streak of cruelty in him that could be awful in the right circumstances.  
> \- I've had this last scene planned since literally December: it was one of the first scenes to come to me, no pun intended. At last, I'm free! Master has given Dobby a sock!


	11. pour one out for the dead

The sounds of Diamond City filtered slowly into through the wall: Solomon’s creaky voice advertising his chems, Myrna shouting out her hatred for synths, the rustle of the people at the noodle stand and the low howl of the wind over the rooftops. MacCready woke slowly, lulled by the perfect warmth of the covers and the comfortable weight of Leigh’s arm over his side. It had been a long time since he’d just slept in without being awakened by X6’s knock on the door or the tinny ring of the alarm clock by his bedside. In the Institute, time was just one more thing that belonged to the scientists: they cut it up into small slices, vivisected it, made every moment accountable to the next. 

Finally, the desire for a drink overpowered the desire to stay in bed, and he forced his eyes open with a yawn. 

“Leigh,” he said sleepily. Nothing. “Leigh.” The other man didn’t move. MacCready rolled over, the movement difficult in the tight wrap of the covers, and turned to face him. Asleep, the charisma that shone from Leigh like a beacon through fog was absent, and he was only a handsome man with a scar bisecting his forehead. MacCready tapped him gently on the shoulder and repeated his name, but Leigh only tightened his grip.

“How are you still alive?” MacCready whispered, tracing the edge of Leigh’s collarbone. MacCready had mastered the art of waking up at a moment’s notice during his time as a guard at Little Lamplight, years before even entering the wasteland. 

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” he said.

“Mmm,” said Leigh, then lifted his head, wild-eyed. “Is there a problem.”

“No problem,” MacCready said, trying not to smile. “I just don’t want to get knifed.”

“Oh,” said Leigh sleepily, and nudged the side of MacCready’s neck with his nose. “Not going to knife you,” he said and yawned widely. “I’m reformed. No more murdering girlfriends. Boyfriends. People. Don’t think I’ve ever murdered a boyfriend, actually.” Leigh was mumbling, his words all slurred together, and halfway through his sentence his eyes closed. MacCready felt an embarrassing stab of affection. 

“Come on, you murdering bastard,” he said gently. “Let me up. I need to take a piss.”

“Fine,” said Leigh, and let MacCready go. MacCready stumbled from the warmth of the bed, still enveloped in a protective sheen of warmth, and shrugged his boxers on. His hips were sore, but it was a rare day when he didn’t wake up to the ache of some injury from the day before. At least he’d enjoyed himself getting this one. 

Reflecting that there were much worse ways to get injured, he slouched down the stairs and to the bathroom to take a piss. On the way back, he snagged a beer from the fridge.

X6 was sitting on Leigh’s loveseat reading an issue of Grognak. 

“What in the fucking- what in the damn hell are you doing here?” MacCready hissed. 

“You shouldn’t have beer with breakfast,” X6 said severely. “It’s bad for you.”

“I’ll just have a freshly pressed mutfruit juice,” MacCready said sourly, and put the beer back in the fridge. “Been waiting long?”

“Only an hour. I was going to wake you at ten.” MacCready pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“What do you want?”

“Father wanted to make sure you were integrating well and weren’t running into any problems with the natives.” The natives, like the Commonwealth was some exotic new place and not where X6 spent most of his life. Hell, when it came down to it X6 was more from the Commonwealth than MacCready was. 

“We haven’t talked to anyone yet,” MacCready said, trying not to be annoyed. He didn’t quite make it, and the sound of his voice was apparently enough to finally rouse Leigh from slumber. 

“Who’s down there?” Leigh called. 

“X6,” MacCready said, and Leigh walked up to the railing wrapped in a sheet and looking cross. 

“Come back in an hour,” he said.  

“I was instructed to--”

“That’s an order,” Leigh said. “And if you’re going to rendezvous with us surface side, you need to wear something else. I don’t need half of Diamond City pulling out the shotguns because you can’t be bothered to wear a different shirt.”

“Yes, sir.” X6 said, totally flat. There was something annoyingly formal about how X6 treated the scientists, and it annoyed MacCready to see him go stiff and submissive around Leigh. He sighed, resigned himself to spending the morning on operational things, and escorted X6 to Leigh’s closet, where he grabbed a set of gunners flannels and Leigh’s set of Chameleon body armor. X6 gave it the blank look which MacCready had come to recognize as a frown, then stripped off his coat and began to put on the clothes. 

A click in the silence. MacCready froze. Someone was trying to open the front door. 

“Shit,” said MacCready. “X6! Quick- radio the institute to pick you up!”

“We can just shoot them,” said X6. 

“No, we can’t! We’re here to set up supply lines between Leigh’s settlements to the Institute, not to take out Diamond City!”

“Fine,” said X6, and grabbed his radio from his coat.

“MacCready,” Leigh called from the loft. “Did you get the other door?”

MacCready raced around the corner and nearly plowed into Cait as she charged into the room. Behind her, Piper had her pistol out and ready to shoot. 

“You,” said Cait, and hauled him up against the wall. “Prove to me you’re not a synth!”

“I’m not a synth!” MacCready said. “Uh, remember that night we went out shooting together, and I shot a raider in the eye with a broom, and then you beat up a bunch of guys?”

“Yeah?”

“Would a synth know about that? I don’t actually know how this works.”

“Haven’t you been in the Institute for the past month?” Piper demanded. 

“Yeah, but I don’t work on that side. I don’t know fuck-all about computers.” Piper glanced at Cait and made a face. 

“That’s him, alright,” Piper said, arms folded. “Work on that side...you work for the Institute now?”

“They, uh, made a very persuasive offer,” MacCready said, remembering that X6 was right around the corner. Cait made a disgusted sound and let go of him. 

“MacCready, you little shit. You couldn’t have sent a message? Where’s Leigh? Did he make it?” Piper jammed her pistol into the waistband just as X6 came charging around the corner, gun held high. 

“X6, no!” said MacCready.  

“Who are you?” Piper said. 

“Courser, Pip,” Cait said, settling into a fighting stance. 

“No, don’t!” said MacCready, not sure which of them he was talking to. He shifted to get himself between Cait and X6, for all the good it would do. Both of them could ruin him in a moment if they decided to fight. 

“Cait,” he said. “Please. You can’t win this one.”

“You really with them now, MacCready?” Cait said, and there was a staggering crunch. MacCready stumbled backwards, his head ringing. Cait had punched him, he thought, and then the pain started. Something had snapped. He’d heard it as much as felt it. His nose. His nose was throbbing and blood was pouring down his face. 

“Don’t hit her,” MacCready said to X6, grabbing at his sleeve. Tears were leaking down his nose, blocking his vision, but he could see Cait out of the corner of his eye. She was squaring up. Cait was going to take a swing at X6 and if Cait swung at X6, X6 was going to _ break her damn arm _ . Blood was running in a warm rivulet from MacCready’s nose over his lips and down his chin, but he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say that wouldn’t end in Cait getting murdered. 

The sound of Leigh loading his shotgun knocked MacCready from his frozen panic. 

“Let’s all be reasonable,” Leigh said, smiling, the shotgun aimed where the blast would catch Cait and Piper. While MacCready was panicking, he’d acquired a pair of pants and a weapon. “X6, take MacCready upstairs and fix his nose,” Leigh said, not taking his eyes off Cait and Piper. MacCready backed cautiously away from Cait, then grabbed X6 by the arm and hustled him up the stairs. 

“You wouldn’t,” Cait said to Leigh down below. Leigh had volunteered himself to deal with her and Piper, and MacCready wished him the best of fucking luck. It wasn’t his damn show, that was for fucking sure. He snatched a stimpack out of the bedside table, drops of blood falling tap tap onto the floor when he bent over.  

“How bad do you need your knees, do you think?” Leigh said. “Doctor outside can fix ‘em up, but why spend the caps? Let’s talk.” Cait’s reply was lost in the sound of Piper’s startled gasp, and then X6 was on the landing. He’d run straight up the wall and over to avoid getting closer to Cait. 

“Thanks,” said MacCready, and went out onto the roof. They sat at the funny little table Leigh used to watch over the square. 

“Can you set my fucking nose,” MacCready said thickly, the words coming out odd. His whole face was warm with pain, like he’d run up the world’s most sudden fever. X6 shucked off his gloves and touched MacCready’s nose, the touch oddly delicate. A wrench of pain, X6’s hand holding MacCready’s jaw steady, and then his nose was back in place. 

“Fucking fuck,” swore MacCready and felt blindly for the cooler. There was a beer inside, as always: MacCready popped it on the edge of the table and took a drink. 

“Why’d you tell me not to hit her?” X6 asked. 

“We’re friends,” MacCready said. He wasn’t feeling particularly friendly at the moment, but he didn’t want Cait dead. “You would have killed her.”

“Yes.” X6’s voice was very flat. “She’s raider trash. You shouldn’t have let her get so close.”

“She’s worried that you killed me and replaced me with a synth, give me a break.” MacCready tilted his head back, pinching his nose, and hoped the bleeding would stop soon. He could taste in the back of his throat, like he was in the grip of a particularly bad cold that had replaced all his snot with blood. 

“I wouldn’t replace you with a synth,” X6 said, serene. “That’s the scientists’ job.”

“You know, X6, I’m really not in the mood for your sass. Maybe if you didn’t have the camouflage skills of a soggy bowl of noodles we could have avoided this.” They sat in silence for a bit, MacCready bleeding in silence, while below them the oblvious citizens of the great green jewel of the commonwealth went shopping. They didn’t look up. No one ever looked up; that was what kept MacCready in business as a sniper. He spit blood onto the ground, then remembered that he had a stimpack. 

“Hell,” he said, and took it out, then jammed the needle into the upper part of his nose. A prick of pain in the dull throb of his face, and then the numbing agent began to kick in. 

“That works better if you don’t hit the nasal cavity,” X6 observed. 

“You do it, then,” said MacCready, half expecting X6 to refuse. But the courser took the stimpack and tilted MacCready’s head back gently, then administered the stimpack in a series of short, sharp pokes that had tears pooling in MacCready’s eyes. Pain was one thing, but it was the proximity that made his eyes tear up, his nerves jangling nervously. Still, each poke hurt less than the last and by the time X6 withdrew the needle, MacCready felt like he could breathe again. 

“You’re pretty good at that,” he said, and leaned cautiously forward. His head was starting to feel less like an overinflated balloon. “I owe you one. If anything ever breaks your nose, let me know, so I can run in the opposite direction.”

“I’ve never broken my nose,” said X6 absently. He turned away from the view of the square, bringing the full weight of his attention down on MacCready. “You should get your enhancements put in. You’re too slow like this.” Was X6 worried about him? MacCready resisted the urge to laugh; he didn’t think his nose was up to it. 

“It’s just a broken nose. I did a whole campaign with the gunners with a broken wrist once- now that was a piece of shit. Had to shoot everything one-handed.” X6 grunted. 

“Don’t resign yourself to being hurt, MacCready. You have resources now. Use them.”

“You sound like Leigh,” MacCready grumbled. 

“Well, then maybe you should listen to him.” There was something odd in X6’s voice. “He’s your handler, isn’t he?” Handler was what the coursers called the scientists in the Bureau who kept tabs on them. 

“He handles me, alright,” MacCready said, and snickered. “Is there a concept of boyfriend in the Institute? He was my partner.” X6 was considering this. X6 didn’t have tells, exactly, but he wasn’t a subtle person. If he was looking at you, then he was thinking about what you said. 

“Good,” he said at last. 

“Good?”

“The capital wasteland is dangerous,” X6 said, and turned away from MacCready. Below them, Myrna was announcing that she didn’t serve synths at her store. “I hate it out here,” X6 said abruptly. “All the people starving for scraps, living for nothing. Why do they even try, if this is the best there is? Diamond City.” There was something oddly lost in X6’s tone, as though he were trying to convince himself. “The Great Green Jewel of the Commonwealth,” he said, still looking out at the square, eyebrows drawn slightly together as though he was trying to understand a particularly difficult subject. 

Whatever was troubling X6, MacCready couldn’t see it. He scanned the square out of habit, making the little calculations that he always did from up high. There was a slight wind from the west, and the guards were down one person, which was making their rotations slow. He and X6 and Leigh could probably sweep the city with the right set-up, and wasn’t that a kick in the head? X6 glanced to the side like a dog sensing some invisible trail and spoke. 

“Leigh wants you downstairs.”

“See you in a few weeks, buddy,” MacCready said. To his surprise, X6 lifted a hand in a salute before returning to his vigil over the rooftops of Diamond City. The door swung shut, and then MacCready was on his way down, Cait and Piper watching him suspiciously. 

“I have to say, I thought the reception would be a little more welcoming.”

“Sorry if we’re not eager to welcome you back from the loving arms of the Institute,” Piper said, stubbing out a cigarette on Leigh’s beleaguered coffee table. 

“Women,” said MacCready, still annoyed that Cait had broken his nose. 

“Ladies,” Leigh said in a warning tone. Whatever he had said, it had worked, because the shotgun was put away and Cait wasn’t swinging at him, but that didn’t mean Cait and Piper were happy. 

“I ain’t no lady,” Cait said stoutly and advanced on MacCready, who resolutely didn’t flinch. “Sorry I broke your nose,” she said, arms folded. 

“Apologize with some whiskey,” MacCready told her, and Cait scowled. 

“Beer.”

“Three beers.”

“Done.” Cait grabbed MacCready by the back of the neck and pulled him into a rough hug. Leigh and Piper were doing some kind of eyerolling thing, but MacCready ignored it. 

“You fucking bitch,” he whispered into Cait’s hair. He’d missed her. “I’ve seen some fucking bullshit.” Cait snorted and stepped back from him. 

“I’ll bet,” she said, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Only you. We gotta catch up later, ya hear?”

“No shit. How else am I going to get my beers?”

 

After the morning fight, the rest of the day was relatively uneventful. After lunch at power noodles, they headed over to Hangman’s Alley to meet Preston. Leigh explained that he’d worked out an agreement with the Institute to get them to stop sabotaging the settlements, and in exchange they wanted some supplies sent to a specific drop-off point. 

“Only you, general,” Preston said, shaking his head. “Anyone else, I would think it was a synth, but you’re the only person I know who could pull this kind of bullshit off and survive.”

“I do my best,” Leigh said. “I’ll try to stay in touch, okay?”

The next stop was the Prydwen. Leigh insisted on meeting with Maxson by himself, which left MacCready and Danse awkwardly standing outside the door. 

So, MacCready wanted to say, you know I know you’re a synth, right? That was just about the worst topic he could start on, which meant that he couldn’t think of anything else. Finally, Danse spoke. 

“Leigh was worried about you, mercenary,” he said. “While you were gone. I don’t know what the nature of your relationship is, but you should try to preserve it. The two of you...seem to make a good team.”

“Are you giving me relationship advice?” MacCready said, and okay, there was something worse than talking about whether Danse was a synth. Danse looked deeply uncomfortable. 

“Never mind,” he said stiffly, and looked away. 

After the miserable cold of the Prydwen, they took a vertibird down to Goodneighbor, where Leigh swanned off to talk with Hancock while MacCready figured out the Caravan route that would get them to the Commonwealth the most quickly. 

“MacCready!” Daisy said when she saw him, and hurried out from behind her counter. “You can’t scare an old woman like this! I thought you were gone for good when I heard that the Institute took you. What would have happened to Duncan?”

“Aw, you’re not old, Daisy. Besides, you know me. I always make it out in the end.”

“Well,” said Daisy, prim, and hugged him. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Me too,” MacCready said, smiling. “Afraid I can’t stay for long, though. I’m gonna head down to the Commonwealth, check on Duncan and grab some stuff.” They stood and chatted until Leigh finally emerged from the bar, looking tired and smelling faintly of beer. 

“You take care of him,” Daisy said, wagging a finger at Leigh. 

“Of course, ma’m,” Leigh said, sounding like he was trying not to laugh, 

“She sounds like X6,” he said as they went around the corner. “I don’t know what you did to get that murderous bastard to like you, but I’m starting to think you’re the real charmer around here.”

“Oh, screw off,” said MacCready. By mutual agreement they decided not to go to the Redford: too many bad memories. Instead, they went to the triggerman hideout MacCready had holed up in the last time, dusted off the mattresses, and settled down to sleep. 

The caravan left at the asscrack of dawn, which meant that MacCready and Leigh had to be up before then to load their supplies. Leigh haggled lazily over the price, and then they were off into the interminable plodding that made up the bulk of all caravan trips. After a while, MacCready forgot the ache of his nose, forgot the cold, forgot Leigh’s presence beside him and the creak of the caravan, and settled into a kind of dull peace in which there was nothing but the next step. 

MacCready had been doing watch duty since before his voice dropped; this kind of wait had worn a comfortable groove in his head years ago. 

Around noon, Leigh spoke. 

“So, what’s this place that we’re stopping at?”

“Do you have any caps on you?” MacCready said, not wanting to talk about Little Lamplight. It had always been dark there, and he and his friends had bitterly joked about the name more than once. It was strange to think that he was six years out now, old enough that most of the kids wouldn’t even remember him. 

“Half of my usual, why?”

“I wanted to send some stuff home,” MacCready said, thinking about the way Little Lamplight was never really warm in winter, and how there was never enough money for medicine. House rules were that if you got sick, you had to tough it out alone for the first few days to prevent anyone else from getting infected. More than once, MacCready had been forced to prevent someone from going to a friend at gunpoint. Back then they’d had Lucy’s drugs, but the new kids wouldn’t have that. 

“Home?” MacCready shrugged with one shoulder and pointed to a dark spot on the horizon. “Used to be. Not anymore. There’s raiders over there.”

Leigh didn’t bring it up again until nighttime, when the two of them were bundled up in the sleeping bags, protected from the wind by an old outpost the merchants used as a stopping post.  

“Why always so quiet about Little Lamplight?” It was just like Leigh to remember a trivial bit of information MacCready had told him months ago. He smiled and dropped his head onto Leigh’s chest.

“Lots of slavers in the Capital Wasteland, back in the day. They used to come into Big Town all the time, try to steal whoever they could. Brotherhood of Steel’s mostly put an end to that now, but still. I’m glad you brought your armor, it’ll make it easier to get past the patrols.”

“Patrols?”

“You’ll see. The Capital Wasteland is one huge settlement now, thanks to the Brotherhood, and they don’t like the idea of people living without paying them for the privilege.”

“Why do you hate them so much?”

“They tried to conscript me, take me away from Lucy. But I hated them before that, anyway.”

“Why?” MacCready winced, thinking of how young and dumb he and Lucy had been when they’d first run away to big town. 

“Oh, you know,” MacCready said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I thought they’d taken all the adventure out of the Commonwealth.” Leigh shifted beside him, then put one heavy arm around MacCready, his palm warm on MacCready’s back. MacCready was vaguely aware that he’d stopped watching the people around them, that the part of his mind dedicated to watching faces and counting bullets had switched to tracking the path Leigh’s thumb made as it stroked his back. 

“I’m sorry,” Leigh said, like he meant it. “But this- the Institute- it’s a bit like something out of a story, isn’t it?”

“Where’s the pretty girl at the end?” MacCready asked, thinking of Lucy. Leigh grinned and butted his forehead against MacCready’s. 

“I’m looking at him right now, sweetheart.”

 

They made the Capital Wasteland three days later. The men looked at Leigh’s suit, listened to him talk about Tesla coils a bit, and then welcomed him eagerly to the Capital. No one paid MacCready any mind at all. Easy as pie. He hadn’t expected to be this bitter, coming back home, but it was like every tree and lamppost was swarming with the memories of Lucy, of Duncan, of his younger, stupider self. 

“The Brotherhood have offered to give us an escort,” Leigh said mildly, and gestured to a vertibird. “Do you mind if we swing by Big Town on the way back?”

“No problem,” said MacCready, who was tired enough to be grateful for a place to sit. He sat in the corner and listened absently as Leigh charmed the Brotherhood soldiers with stories of the campaign he’d fought in before the war. 

The view from the vertibird was fascinating, a composite of all the views he’d ever gotten from the top of a tree and then some. There: the tree where he’d shot down a knot of supermutants, the hill where he and Lucy had a picnic. The river moved beneath them, and then they were headed south and into the final sprawl that was the southern half of the Capital Wasteland. 

They touched down near an old bunker. Leigh finished drawing a schematic of the tesla coils on his armor and handed it to the pilots, and then they were off. 

“Are you sure what you’re looking for is still here?”

“I’m sure,” Leigh said, and climbed back into his armor. The helmet clamped over his head, and he began to move, each step making the earth tremble. Leigh had brought his best armor, and in it he was more like a robot than a human being. “Me and some of the others stashed our things pretty deep.” He hummed deep in his throat, then advanced over the hill, the pistons of his armor letting out little hisses as he moved. 

They reached the bunker. There had been some kind of fight here long ago: there were blast marks on the door and around the entrance. Leigh strode confidently in, parked his armor in the corner and started to tap away at a computer. 

“Subject:  [ 金 ](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%87%91) 理” Leigh said, and a few other words that MacCready couldn’t understand. The system beeped, then turned black and rebooted into a new screen, one filled with characters MacCready couldn’t read. 

“What did you say?” he asked. 

“Jin Li,” Leigh said. “That’s my name.” He hit some buttons on the console, and then there was a long, angry beep. 

“Jin?” asked MacCready, 

“Damn it,” said Leigh at the same time. “Goddamn, who’s been in my system? Fucking yankees.” He punched in a new command irritably, then seemed to remember that MacCready had spoken. “Jin, it’s my ‘last name.’ In China we say the family name first.”

“But Li’s your… first name?”

“My personal name, yeah,” Leigh said, looking distracted. “Damn it to hell, someone’s triggered the security and I can’t log-in from here.” He punched in a bunch of numbers and started to type, muttering to himself. MacCready lit up a cigarette, then cocked his head. He was never sure, afterwards, what he heard: a footstep, a breath, the rustle of clothing. 

“Someone’s here,” he hissed, drawing his gun. Leigh typed in another line of code and the screen flashed just as a squad walked in through the back door and aimed square at his head. 

“Paladin Schilling?” Leigh said, slowly raising his hands. “Is there a reason you’ve got a gun aimed at me?” It was the brotherhood of steel patrol that had given them a ride down. There were three of them: the leader, a weedy scribe and a man who was clearly used to wearing power armor everywhere and resented that he wasn’t wearing it now. They ditched it in order to sneak up on us, MacCready thought. 

“Elder Maxson sent out word that you’d been to the Institute. We know there’s a chance you’re a synth. What are you here for?”

“I’m retrieving something under orders. MacCready, put away your gun.” MacCready lowered his gun resentfully and stuck it in his belt. The scribe had a bead on the front of his jacket. If worse came to worse, the institute plating would probably prevent a few shots from killing him, but it would almost certainly break his ribs. 

“Yes, we know. The weapons hidden in this bunker. The Brotherhood Outcasts tried to retrieve them, but were ultimately unsuccessful. Fire up the terminal.”

“Affirmative,” said Leigh, and went back to typing. MacCready didn’t believe for a second that he wasn’t up to something. Don’t give it away, he thought, and folded his arms and tried to look annoyed, like this was just a routine check on the way through a town. Leigh was typing, and MacCready could see that all the letters were in english. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t what he’d been doing before. 

Finally, a hiss in the wall and the door swung open. A small storeroom was in the space beyond the wall. The smell of dust came from the room, and MacCready knew without needing to ask that this room hadn’t been opened in two hundred years. 

“Go ahead, Paladin,” said Leigh, sounding mildly irritated. “You could just have asked, you know.”

“And have you lie to me? Watch him,” he said to the guard, who grunted. Leigh shrugged and returned to the console. 

“What are you doing?” the soldier demanded. 

“I’m looking at the logs,” Leigh said, sounding annoyed. “Come look, if you want.” He stepped back and put his hands on his head. There was a little twist to his wrist, the sort you wouldn’t catch if you didn’t know Leigh. MacCready was willing to bet that Leigh had just flicked a knife into his hand. 

“So, are you from around here?” he asked the scribe. 

“What’s it to you,” said the scribe, annoyed. She was young, with dark hair and a thin, hungry look. MacCready was willing to bet she’d joined the brotherhood for regular meals and a place to sleep. 

“Oh, you just look like someone I knew a few years back in Big Town. Did you ever meet a woman name of Paladin Cross? Short, dark skin, buzz cut.” The guard had been walking towards Leigh’s terminal, but at the mention of Star Paladin Cross he jerked his head to look at MacCready. 

Leigh’s knife went in one side of his neck and straight out the other in a spray of blood. The scribe jerked, turning backwards to look for the source of the noise, her gun wavering in her hands. MacCready threw himself to one side as she fired. Leigh slit her throat from behind, threw her body on the ground, then strode into the storeroom.  

Fuck, thought MacCready. A single shot went of, the sound echoing wildly in the bunker. MacCready got against the wall. On the ground, the little scribe was clutching at her throat. MacCready put her out of her misery. 

“Leigh?” he called. 

“All clear,” Leigh said. MacCready followed him into the bunker, gun at the ready. The paladin was lying on the floor. Leigh had shot him in the back. As MacCready watched, Leigh stepped on his hand, preventing him from reaching his fallen gun. 

“Traitor,” said the Paladin, his punctured lung bubbling horribly.

“I don’t belong to you,” Leigh said, and shot him in the forehead. “Meihui’s suit will never fall into the hands of american thugs like you as long as I’m alive to stop it.” He leaned over and spit on the corpse. MacCready felt shaky, like the world had tilted slightly while he wasn’t looking. He checked himself for a unnoticed injury, and found none. It was something about Leigh- not the violence, or the betrayal. He was used to those. It was the way Leigh had said  _ american _ , maybe, or the way he’d said his name. 

Whatever game Leigh was playing, MacCready wasn’t sure what the rules were, so he hung back and watched as Leigh scanned the shelves, careless of the body at his feet. It was silent in the old bunker, the wind whistling idly through the shattered windows. MacCready went outside and scanned the hills to make sure the patrol hadn’t brought any extras, and felt sick. It was usually a death sentence to kill a brotherhood member in the wasteland. The hierarchy didn’t take kindly to wastelanders getting above their station. 

The hills were quiet, and so MacCready headed back to Leigh, who seemed to have located what he wanted. 

“American?” MacCready hadn’t meant to say it. He watched Leigh carefully, ready to run, and Leigh pretended that he didn’t see MacCready doing it. 

“There’s a certain kind of person who thinks everything belongs to them,” Leigh replied, an ugly look on his face. 

“Meihui?” The name was strange in his mouth. 

“You’ll see,” said Leigh, and took an ancient box off the shelf. He paused a moment, blew the dust off the top, then handed it to MacCready.  “I took out a whole damn base with what’s in here.”

“What is it?”

“It’s my stealth suit,” said Leigh, and handed it to MacCready. “I want you to have it.” MacCready opened the box, not sure what to say, and drew the shining fabric out. It was oddly heavy for such a small thing, and sparked when he touched it. There was a button in the center of the fabric; MacCready pressed it and the suit shimmered, then disappeared, leaving his hands filled with nothing. The fabric was still in his hands. He could feel it. But no matter how he started, there was nothing in his hands. 

“Rookie mistake,” said Leigh, smiling. “Turn it off, or you’ll be half an hour finding the button.” There was something terribly sad in his expression. 

“Holy shit,” said MacCready. “It’s invisible?”

“Yep. There’s only five of these that were ever produced, to my knowledge, and two of them are here.” He took a different suit from the box and scrutinized it. “This was Meihui’s.  I guess she never picked it up. She must have died with DC.” There was one more thing in the box: a note, written in incomprehensible characters. It was only a few lines, but Leigh’s face changed when he read it, like a distant light had come on in his head. 

“Xiaofan survived,” he said, and smiled. “I hope she gave them hell.”

“Were they your friends?”

“They were comrades,” Leigh replied. He said comrade like it wasn’t a word at all, but a spell, the key to some door MacCready had never seen. “We spearheaded the greatest Chinese success of the Anchorage campaign. Delun was there too, but he didn’t make it out.” Leigh smiled distantly. “We took out an entire full staffed base with these suits.”

“How?”

“There weren’t expecting us,” Leigh said. “Xiaofan poisoned the first round, Delun and I took the barracks, and Meihui took the high command.” He smiled, but there was something very old and tired in it. “I started with my own barracks,” Leigh said, and MacCready felt the back of his neck prickle with creeping horror. “After I’d done for that, I went to the next. And the next. It wasn’t hard. Everyone was tired all the time and we didn’t have the water for showers, so it wasn’t so strange for things to smell like blood. No one had any idea.” 

A long pause. Leigh’s face had a kind of bitter, ugly determination in it, as if it was burning him up to speak. MacCready wanted to tell him to shut up, to stop hurting himself, but he couldn’t. The same thing that made Leigh so compelling was at work now, worse than ever, an invisible force drawing MacCready towards the abyss at the center of Leigh’s heart. 

“I spoke at their funerals,” Leigh said, and there was a kind of breathless horror in his voice. “I cried, because I missed them. And for what? We still lost the war.”

MacCready threw aside the suit and went to Leigh. 

“Stop it. You’re alive. That’s what matters.” Leigh stared at him, and barked out a short, sharp laugh. 

“If you say so.”

“Listen to me. All those people would have died in the war anyway.” MacCready grabbed Leigh by the shoulders and forced him to look at MacCready. Leigh’s gaze was like a spotlight, but MacCready forced himself to stare into it. This was no time to flinch. “It doesn’t matter if you pushed the button personally,” he said, throwing the words in Leigh’s face. The man was in some kind of shock, and MacCready needed to make sure his words got through. “The entire commonwealth is different because you came, Leigh. It’s better. The Minutemen are better, the settlements are better.” MacCready swallowed. “It’s a fucking miracle that you came out of that pod alive, and whatever it took to get you here, it was worth it.”

“It wasn’t.” said Leigh, and then he breathed out, a long, ragged breath. “Look at you,” he said, his eyes shuttering. “Getting all worked up.” There was something annoyingly dismissive in his tone, something almost Institute in its condescension. You wouldn’t understand, like MacCready had never betrayed anyone before, like MacCready hadn’t been through hell and a half just to stay alive. 

“Stop that,” said MacCready. Leigh stared at him and then shrugged and smiled, and it was like a door closing, like a suit of armor clanking shut. MacCready, not knowing what to do, grabbed Leigh in a hug. 

“Hey,” said Leigh, sounding annoyed. “I’m fine. Let go of me.” He sounded fine. He sounded like a fucking liar, was what he sounded like. MacCready held on, and after a long silence Leigh sighed in defeat and slid one arm around MacCready’s back. Several times he started to speak, stuttering out a phrase or two, but in the end he gave up and buried his face in the side of MacCready’s neck. 

“Fine,” he mumbled at last. “I don’t want to be here. In this bunker. Alive.” His arms tightened around MacCready. “But I want to be with you.”

“Well, that’s something. I am pretty good company.”

“You fucker,” Leigh said, and straightened up, the stepped back. “Sorry about that.”

“Eh, better than last time. Just don’t try to shoot me and it’s all good.” It was a flippant thing to say, but what else was there? You either made jokes or you capped yourself in the head late at night when you couldn’t live with yourself anymore. Leigh’s face went dark. 

“I won’t,” he said, and took MacCready’s hand. “Never.”

“Glad we got that ironed out, because I plan to stay with you until the day I die. Now, come on. Dramatic statements are great and all, but I’d like to put off dying for as long as possible. We should still be able to make Rivet City by nightfall.”

“You fucking…” Leigh said, then laughed. “I used to think of myself as a practical person, but then I met you.” He grabbed the suits, his face set as though it hurt him to touch them, then loaded them into the back of the power armor. 

“Well, that’s just not true. You’re probably the most melodramatic person I’ve ever met.” Leigh snorted. 

“I’m cracking up in my old age,” he said, and paused, then handed the Gauss rifle to MacCready. “Take care of this, yeah?” From his tone, MacCready was willing to be it had belonged to a friend- one of the spies or one of the people Leigh had killed. It didn’t really matter, not from this side of the war. In the end a grave was a grave, no matter how the body had gotten there. 

“You bet,” said MacCready. They loaded up the rest of the loot, and then Leigh got into his power armor. Before they left, Leigh hooked up a couple of wires, then punched in a couple of commands on the computer. MacCready didn’t know Chinese, but he knew a countdown when he saw it. They made it to a hill just beyond the bunker before the explosions started. The bunker went out in a blaze of glory, the fire lighting the windows in red and orange. Leigh stood at attention, then gave an odd salute, his fist clenched. 

MacCready didn’t need to speak Chinese to know that when Leigh spoke, he was saying goodbye.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Not pictured: Cait and Piper doing the same sleepless vigil that Leigh did when MacCready was kidnapped, only they had to do it for more than a month.  
> -You can't convince me that Cait, X6 and Danse don't get into fistfights behind the SS's back literally constantly. Like, of all the bullshit in the game, the thing that breaks my suspension of disbelief most is the idea that I could leave Danse and X6 alone together for any amount of time. They'd murder each other.  
> \- Leigh has a soundtrack now! Find it [here](http://8tracks.com/eclecticat/safe-distance)!  
> \- My birthday is Monday the thirteenth, in case anyone wants to leave me a nice comment as a birthday present. ; )


	12. lying side by side

The fire made a funeral pyre of the bunker; it burned like a beacon, calling trouble to them from all over the Capital Wasteland. MacCready was itching to leave, but Leigh stood, staring, useless as a statue, until MacCready spit out his cigarette and cleared his throat.

“We need to move before we catch more attention.”

“Where to?” MacCready weighed the options.

“Getting out of here is going to be hell with the Brotherhood on our tail. There’s patrols up the ass at Rivet City and Megaton, so those are out. We’re pretty close to the biggest cities, which is going to be a fucking pain, ‘cause there’s no way we don’t catch at least one patrol before we make it to Big Town.”

“About how many members of the Brotherhood are stationed in the Capital Wasteland, do you think?” Leigh asked, scanning the area around them for something MacCready couldn’t see. It was evening, soon to be night, and the sky was purple with sunset, the night insects just beginning to chirp. A perfect time for running and hiding, a time for smugglers and gun-runners and thieves.

“Couple hundred, at least, but they’re not all on patrol. Still, we won’t avoid them if you’re in that suit of yours.” Power armor was so loud and obvious that MacCready had avoided many a Brotherhood patrol just by keeping an eye out for their headlights.

“Perfect,” said Leigh, and started to walk. “I’ve always thought that you should try driving a power armor, and there’s no time like the present.”

“Know how to…” There was an empty suit of Power Armor just over the hill, next to an empty vertibird.

“Shame they came after us,” Leigh said, sounding a little sad. He’d marched straight into the vertibird and was grabbing things from the dash. “Their CO probably ordered them to grab whatever we have to get one up on Maxson. They were only following orders.”

“You’re the one that started it,” MacCready said, puzzled. Leigh had been the first one to fire, and there had been real contempt in his face when he’d faced down the leader, as ugly as an expression MacCready had ever seen cross his face.

“Fair enough,” said Leigh, in a tone of voice that could mean anything at all. He vanished into the back of the vertibird, then returned carrying a radio and some tools. “Too bad I can’t drive this bird, that would be a hell of a getaway.” Some days, trying to read Leigh was like trying to shoot straight in a goddamn hurricane. MacCready caught the fusion core Leigh tossed him and loaded it balefully into the goddamn suit.

“X6 can drive a vertibird,” he called, then climbed in so he wouldn’t have to hear Leigh’s response. The inside of the suit was still slippery with sweat, and the armor pressed in on all sides. The dim light filtering through the helmet and the stale air made him feel like he was drowning, gasping for air, his arms too heavy to reach the surface. He forced himself to take a step, the strain making his thighs ache, then another, and walked into the side of the vertibird. Leigh was quietly sniggering.

“Hold still,” Leigh said, still laughing, and popped a panel on the side of the armor. A series of taps,  and a fan sprang to life, pushing cool night air into the suit. The height inside the suit changed, lifting MacCready to the visor’s height, the weight shifted, and the display blinked and turned on. MacCready raised one arm experimentally and made a fist.

“I don’t recommend you get into a fight in this thing, sweetheart,” Leigh said, stepping back. “You’re lucky this was my job during the war, so I can more or less eyeball it. Radio says people are inbound in about ten minutes, and I recommend we be somewhere else.”

“No shit? Which direction are they coming from, do you know?”

“Megaton,” Leigh said, getting into his armor. A buzz, and then Leigh’s voice, speaking directly into his ear. There were speakers in the helmet. “If anyone asks, you’re Knight Morrison, escorting Knight Reyes up to the border to meet with Senior Scribe Amari.”

“Order confirmed, _Knight Reyes,_ ” MacCready said mockingly, and stomped forward. He’d always assumed the Brotherhood gave the suits to their strongest members on some stupid reward system that made the stronger and the weak weaker, but the system made more sense now. MacCready had gained weight and muscle since he’d started running with Leigh, and he was still panting with the effort of keeping the suit going. A few months ago he wouldn’t have been able to move it all. They moved slowly north, their headlamps lighting the darkness in front of them. Night had fallen, and the distant lights of Megaton gleamed across the Wasteland. MacCready could hear distant snatches of music.

He’d always wanted to buy Lucy a house in Megaton, maybe help her open a clinic, but those days were gone now. The memory faded with the lights, and then they were out in the darkness, only the sound of the radio to accompany them. It didn’t seem like anyone had picked up on the missing patrol yet. Once, a set of Brotherhood soldiers passed them; Leigh waved. MacCready fought not to breathe loudly into his speaker. Should he stop? Should he keep walking? The patrol had two suits and a scribe; more than they could take.

“On my way up to see Amari!” Leigh called, brandishing the radio in his hand. “My helmet’s on the fritz again!”

“Do you copy?” a voice said in MacCready’s ear.

“We ran into some centaurs near the river,” MacCready said, trying to pitch his voice low.

“Best of luck, Brother,” the voice said. “And good luck with Amari. Wilhelm threw his back out again and she’s on the warpath.”  MacCready scrambled to reply, but the patrol was already moving on, their lights sweeping the path in front of them. The darkness seemed to have closed in entirely– the moon was a mere sliver, and the trees blocked the path. MacCready’s muscles were aching, but his body was beginning to adjust to the movement, to the dull, heavy thrum of machinery, to the mechanical power obvious in each step. He walked as if in a dream, the darkness yielding before him, the trees new and strange, until at last they caught sight of the distant lights of Big Town.

Was this what Leigh felt all the time? The suit was more than just power; it made everything smaller, more distant. It was like a perpetual barricade, a wall between the user and the world. Even MacCready’s thoughts were different; the suit and the moonlight were making him  him stupid. He shook the strangeness from his head and walked to the bridge, hands in the air, and waited. A sentry came out across the bridge; it was Knock, wearing a full set of armor and carrying a shotgun.

“Who’s there?” she called. MacCready grinned; same old Knock as always. She’d gained a little weight since he’d left, but the rest was the same; same dumb hat, same pistol, same body armor. He slid from the power armor.

“Knock Knock,” he called, laughing. “It’s the Mayor.” Knock hesitated, then lowered her gun.

“Major Pain in the Ass,” she yelled across the bridge. “Come on in! Bring your friend.” Knock was two years older than MacCready; they’d been jointly in charge of security at Little Lamplight for years. She rushed across the bridge and lifted MacCready in a backbreaking hug, then slugged him in the shoulder.

“That’s for not telling us you were coming. You couldn’t have come with a caravan? Or– let me guess– you’re in trouble?”

“Not exactly,” MacCready said, and ducked away to avoid another punch. “Just don’t tell anyone about the power armor.” Knock’s eyes got wide.

“You didn’t kill anyone for that, did you? We’re not messing with the Brotherhood, not even for you, Mayor.”

MacCready held up his hand. “No, it belongs to my friend. There’s just some politics, that’s all.” Leigh took this as his cue to slide from the power armor.

“I’m with the Commonwealth Brotherhood, and this is my armor. MacCready said you could help me stash some things.” Knock folded her arms, staring at Leigh, who smiled. He’d worn the Brotherhood of Steel suit for this mission, and in it he looked like the definition of a Paladin. Broad shoulders, short hair, tall, good skin: everything that peasants like them didn’t have. Knock glanced sideways at MacCready, then shrugged.

“You can put your stuff in storage.” They climbed back into the suits, then followed her into the little town, the footsteps shaking the ground.

“Never pictured you joining the Brotherhood,” Knock remarked, leading them around the back of the clinic.

“Don’t be fooled by the suit,” MacCready said with a snort. “I ain’t.”

“Good,” said Knock. She walked over to a piece of turf, grabbed a plant and pulled, revealing a long flight of stairs leading into the ground. This was new. MacCready walked down first, then Leigh, then Knock. The door shut behind them and there was a click, the sound of a shotgun ready to blow.  

“Is he a snitch?” Knock asked. At a guess, her shotgun was probably about an inch from the back of Leigh’s head.

“Nah, he’s cool,” MacCready said. A beat, and then the lights came on. They were in a hidden underground basement, the walls stacked with various supplies, ammo, guns, liquor. If MacCready didn’t miss his guess, someone was smuggling things through the Brotherhood perimeter to avoid taxes. He grinned.

He and Leigh climbed out of their suits at the same time, Leigh with his hands held high. Knock was still holding the gun on him. Both of them glanced at MacCready at the same time, their glances asking him to explain.

“This is my boyfriend,” MacCready said, sighing. “Leigh, this is Knock. We used to patrol together.” Knock gave MacCready a look.

“A boyfriend? So soon after Lucy? Have you even taken care of Duncan?”

“I have, actually,” MacCready said, grinning. “We got him the medicine. I’m… well, I’ve got some stuff to take care of, but I was hoping to bring him to stay with me soon. We’ve got a house up in Diamond City.”

“Moving up in the world, Mayor. Come on, then, let’s go see Red.” It was late, but Red was still up in her old clinic, leafing through a stack of papers on her desk.

“Well, if it ain’t the Mayor,” she said, and grabbed him in a hug. “I thought you were dead,” she said, ruffling his hair.

“Hey, hey, I’m not that bad off,” he said, laughing. Red gave him a look. “Don’t look at me like that! I’m fine. I haven’t been that bad lately.” Since he’d met Leigh, really, but he wasn’t going to say that where Leigh could hear it. The scolding Red gave him woke Knick and Princess up,  and then it turned into a small reunion, the five of them holed up in Red’s clinic. MacCready had never much liked Big Town, but this was the best part of it– everyone holed up together, laughing and telling shitty jokes. Finally, Red chased them out of her clinic, saying that she needed to sleep, and Knock took them down and locked them into the basement.

“I didn’t know that you had family here, Mayor,” Leigh said slyly.

“Eh, it’s, well, you know…” MacCready said, trying to think of a way to describe Big Town. “It’s nicer than it used to be. I never did too well here. Too used to being Mayor, I guess.” He’d had such, big stupid expectations of Big Town when he’d left Little Lamplight, and they’d all been cut short. Not enough food, no barricades to patrol, no money, no bullets, no one really in charge and no one willing to listen to him, and the slavers and mutants constantly on their doorstep. He’d bailed after a few months and only come back looking for Lucy. Things had changed a bit while he was gone, but he’d been too blind to see it, dead set on finding something better… “Wish I would have left Lucy here, though.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Leigh said, and pressed a gentle kiss to the side of MacCready’s head. There were a pair of mattresses in the corner; Leigh supplemented them with their bedrolls, then plopped down, his gaze inviting MacCready to join him. MacCready grinned and sat sideways on him, his head on Leigh’s shoulder. Tiredness was beginning to set in; he stifled a yawn. The power armor was going to have him feeling sore the next day. Leigh looped one arm around MacCready’s shoulder and kissed his neck.

“Your boyfriend, eh?” Leigh said, a rumble of amusement in his voice.

“Yeah?” MacCready said, yawning, and tucked his head under Leigh’s chin. “My awful boyfriend, who made me walk several miles in power armor.”

“You poor thing,” Leigh said, marching his fingers along the bumps of MacCready’s spine. “It’s okay, I love you even if you’re too small to drive a power armor properly.”

Love. The word knocked MacCready right out of his sleepy haze; it wasn't a word he'd heard from Leigh's mouth before.

“What?” he said, embarrassed at the way his voice broke. "Can you, uh, repeat that?"

"I love you...?" Leigh said, and trailed off. A flush traveled across his face. "Oh. Haven't I....? I thought it was obvious." He was grinning now, obviously a embarrassed, affection beaming from every corner of his face. 

"It wasn't," MacCready said, and stopped. "It wasn't obvious."

“Oh,” Leigh said, small and mortified. “I, um, well, please imagine that I told you sooner.”

MacCready burst into laughter, his shoulders shaking; Leigh looked like he was ready to sink into the ground. MacCready tried to speak several times, but couldn’t quite manage it through the giggles.

“You’re awful,” Leigh said hotly. MacCready kissed him, still giggling. The slide of Leigh’s mouth against his made him feel warm all over, and he sighed when Leigh slid his hand into MacCready’s hair, his nails rasping pleasantly against MacCready’s scalp. He was tired, but not that tired; he’d have to be dying not to take an interest in Leigh.

“Sweetheart,” Leigh murmured, his voice shivering across MacCready’s skin like a caress. “You’re so cruel to me, after I gave you that nice gun.” MacCready slid one hand over Leigh’s shoulder and was pulled into a warm, biting kiss that made him shiver and ache, his pants growing uncomfortably tight. They hadn’t had sex the whole long time on the road, but they’d slept in the same bedroll for warmth. MacCready had been tortured by Leigh’s body pressed against his, the smell of him, the possessive spread of Leigh’s fingers over his hipbone in the silent dark. He fumbled his shirt off, groaning when Leigh took the opportunity to press kisses into his neck and along his shoulders.

“I’ll be sure to make it up to you,” he said, and swung one leg over Leigh, straddling him. Leigh’s eyes were half-lidded, his lips barely parted, his gaze pinning MacCready in place like the dot of a scope. They slid into a kiss that made MacCready pant for breath. Leigh’s hand was between them, fumbling with the button on his pants.

“I love the way you look,” Leigh said when they pulled back from the kiss, his voice hoarse with desire. “You’re like a bullet.” He put his hand on the side of MacCready’s hip, running his thumb along the groove of MacCready’s hip muscle. “Nothing there that doesn’t need to be there.”

“Mmm,” said MacCready, arching a little, desperately wanting Leigh’s hand to slide lower.

“Darlin’,” Leigh said, a little smirk at the corner of his mouth, his hand trailing lower over the top of MacCready’s pants, fingers dipping under the waistband. MacCready wanted to be touched so much it was making him crazy. He sat up, bracing one hand on Leigh’s shoulder, and pulled his pants down. Leigh looked delighted and hungry; he pulled MacCready into a biting kiss and palmed his ass.

“I want to fuck you so badly,” he murmured into MacCready’s ear.  “Do you want me to?”

“I could be convinced,” MacCready said, and bit his lip when Leigh slid one hand along MacCready’s dick. Leigh could have asked MacCready for anything and MacCready would have said yes, anything at all, if Leigh would just keep touching him. His nerves were firing like an execution squad; he clung to Leigh’s shoulders when the other man picked him up and set him on the bedroll. A dizzying moment of disorientation, and then MacCready was on his back and Leigh was slipping between his legs to take MacCready in his mouth  MacCready groaned and tried not to arch off the bed, his breath coming in little gasps. Fuck. Leigh’s mouth was so warm, and his hands were on MacCready’s hips, his lips sliding up and down...

“Are you convinced?” Leigh said, sitting up, his mouth sliding off MacCready’s dick with a filthy pop.

“Yeah,” MacCready said, flushed. Leigh grabbed a bottle of lube from his pack, and MacCready stifled a laugh.

“Prepared, are we?”

“You know it,” Leigh said, grinning. It was less of a shock, this time, when Leigh slid a finger into MacCready, but it still made him groan a little. His body felt warm, his nerves all lit up by the slide of Leigh’s finger in and out of him. Another, and then a third. MacCready bit the side of his arm in an effort not to make noise, but Leigh pulled it away, and scooped him into a kiss.

“Here,” he said, and sat down against the wall, inviting MacCready to climb into his lap again. “Take your time,” he said gently when MacCready climbed on top of him. The tip of Leigh’s dick was rubbing against MacCready’s ass; he put his hands on Leigh’s shoulder and sank down. It hurt, hurt and felt good in a way that made MacCready ache all over, and then it felt amazing.

MacCready groaned, sinking down, and then started to move, his thigh muscles protesting the additional work. Leigh shifted, his hips bucking against MacCready, and then they were moving together, Leigh’s hand on MacCready’s back, holding him steady.

“Fuck,” MacCready. Even though it was the second time, it was just as overwhelming as the first– the feel of Leigh sinking into him, the stretch, the slight ache, the way it felt completely different from anything else he’d ever done, too much, too good. He bit Leigh’s neck and Leigh groaned, pushing into him, MacCready pushing down to meet him, wanting more, more, just like that, Leigh’s big hand around his dick, making him moan.

“Oh,” he said, and came, little embarrassing noises escaping from his mouth. He slumped against Leigh, his fingers digging into the other man’s shoulder, and bit Leigh’s shoulder when Leigh pushed into him one last time and came.

“Fuck,” said Leigh, sounding faintly dazed. MacCready lifted himself off Leigh’s dick and settled down in his lap, feeling ready to drop off straight to sleep. There was something about sex with Leigh that made him feel safe, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary. Leigh gave him a little shove and rolled onto the bed, cleaned himself off with a few half-hearted strokes of an old rag, chugged down some water and dropped off straight to sleep.

 

He woke to footsteps and snatched his pistol out from his belt. It was Knock, holding a little lantern in the underground darkness of the basement. She glanced at Leigh, who was still half-asleep, his bare chest open to the world.  MacCready felt a little kick of delight looking at him; there were bite-marks on his shoulders from MacCready’s teeth, his skin turned to gold by the candle. MacCready sat up and Leigh made a noise and started to sit up, scrubbing the sleep from his face.

“I’ll be back in a second,” MacCready said gently, and stood to follow Knock. His junk was hanging out, but hell, it was nothing she hadn’t seen before. He pulled his pants on, then followed her to the stairs.

“How the hell did you grab that?” she said. MacCready opened his mouth, then closed it. He wasn’t all that sure himself. How could he explain Leigh beside him on the open road, the stolen kisses snatched in bathrooms, the cold touch of a knife at his neck, the warmth of Leigh when they were in bed together?

“Got lucky, I guess,” he said, and shrugged. “You got something for me?”

“Brotherhood Patrol came through. Stay down here till I come down, and if anyone comes down that ain’t me, shoot em.”

“Got it,” MacCready said. Knock vanished up the stairs and cut the lights, and MacCready walked back to Leigh in the gloomy underground dark, smiling.

“What is it?” Leigh said, his voice a rough whisper in the dark. MacCready settled down next to him, enjoying the way Leigh’s arm felt slung over his side.

“It’s the fuzz,” he said, smiling.

“Why are y’all smuggling things?” Leigh asked, yawning.  

“One third tax,” MacCready said grimly. Leigh was a huge, warm shape in the dark, his arm a comfortable snare against MacCready’s back, comfortable enough to make even the Brotherhood of Steel seem tolerable. “If there’s one thing people from Little Lamplight have in common, it’s that we don’t have a whole lot of respect for authority.”

“I see,” Leigh said thoughtfully. They lay together in the sleepy morning silence, Leigh’s chest rising and falling. This was what love felt like, as MacCready remembered it; more than the kisses, it was someone to wake up with. Leigh turned to face MacCready, though MacCready couldn’t see his face in the dark, and spoke.

“MacCready, if you had to choose a faction to rule the Capital Wasteland, who would you pick?”

“Pfff. Is that a trick question? I’d pick the fucking Minutemen. Rule is bullshit. People don’t need to be ruled, they need ammo and something to eat.” Leigh snorted.

“True. But if you don’t get a government going, it’s going to belong to the Brotherhood. They’ve committed the troops. Unless someone kicks them out, it’s gotta be them or the Institute.” MacCready snorted.

“The Institute wouldn’t be half bad if you killed all the scientists and told the coursers to go kill everything else. Otherwise, forget it. They’re so distracted by their fancy shit they’d never get it together enough to rule anything.” Leigh hummed, apparently distracted, his fingers tapping some kind of rhythm against MacCready’s back.

“I wonder...” he said, and trailed off. “How many people do you think are on board the Prydwen? A hundred, two hundred?”

“Two hundred, at least,” MacCready said

“About how many of those do you think are kids?” Leigh asked, then continued without asking for an answer. “Twenty, I guess, at least, plus or minus a few, depending. Squires.” He was silent for a bit, then spoke. “Last question: is it better to save one innocent person, or four people who are just, you know, more or less.”

“Are we talking assholes, like raiders, or just some random person?”

“Assholes, but not as bad as raiders. About as much of a jerk as you, I’d guess.” MacCready snorted.

“I don’t know where you’d find another three of me, unless you’re talking Institute clones. Ugh. I don’t care too much for this kind of thinking, Leigh.” MacCready had the sense that Leigh was looking for some kind of advice, but he wasn't sure why he didn’t just come out and ask. Whatever puzzle Leigh was trying to solve, he’d have more success if he didn’t talk around it.

“Okay, but what would you pick?”

“Well, how useful are these four assholes?”

“More useful than anyone else,” Leigh said absently. “They’re good with guns.”

“Well then, pick them. Why are you asking me this? Did you get soft all of a sudden?”

“Mmm,” said Leigh, chuckling. “I’ve, uh, come to the realization that I need a better targeting system.” MacCready thumped Leigh on the top of his forehead for giving him such a useless answer.  “Okay, okay. I’m used to killing everyone who gets in the way of the mission, but I doubt China cares too much one way or another. Figure I better pick a new mission.” His voice was still too casual when he said China, like he was speaking the name of a dead lover. MacCready ignored it.

“So you’re asking me for advice on how to be sensible? About time. God knows you need it.” Leigh chuckled, his chest rising and falling under MacCready’s fingers.

“Good thing I have you,” Leigh said, voice suffused with enough tenderness to make MacCready feel faintly dizzy despite the clanging alarms in his head. Leigh was planning something big and MacCready was planning to be there for it, to lie side by side with him, hands tangled together in the all-concealing dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Seasaltpepper drew [this baller fanart of chapter 7](http://nomette.tumblr.com/post/146832214589/seasaltpepper-i-drew-fanart-for-shot-through)!!!  
> -Knock and Princess and Red are all from Fallout 3. MacCready talks about the Capital Wasteland like it's pretty bad, but it doesn't make any sense to me that the Brotherhood taking over would be worse than super mutants and raiders. I figure he probably launched himself straight into dangerous mercenary work rather than stay in Big Town, which probably seemed like a disappointment to him after spending five years as mayor. There's a fic somewhere to be written about how he went from being a cocky little kid used to being in charge of everything to the desperate mercenary he is when you meet him...  
> \- Spot the Overwatch reference. ; )


	13. kids with guns

Time passed, alone together in the familiar underground darkness. It was just like people from Little Lamplight to build another cave to hide in. MacCready walked around the cavern, doing an inventory in the dim glow from Leigh’s power, while Leigh lounged on the bedroll shirtless and read from a huge tome. 

“What’s that?”

“The Codex,” Leigh said, like that meant anything. “Borrowed it from the vertibird. It’s the rule book for the Brotherhood.” MacCready sneered at it. 

“What a waste of space. What in the hell do they need all those rules for?”

“Not everyone can drive themselves like you, sweetheart. Some people, they learn to obey early and they never really stop. Most people, actually. You, you’re special.”

“You too,” MacCready said, examining a large jar of what was almost certainly moonshine. Looked like Red had finally decided to put those chemistry skills of hers to good use. “Or are you going to tell me you’re going on the straight and narrow?” 

Leigh chuckled. “No. But I like to know the rules. It’s easier to fight when you know all the walls, and the doors through ‘em. It’s like a card game; you gotta know the rules so you can best figure out how to cheat.” 

“It figures that you’d be studying just so you could cheat better.” 

“Don’t worry, darlin’, I would never cheat on you,” Leigh said, and winked.  Huh. Maybe this was an old-timey thing. In the Commonwealth, people weren’t exclusive until they were married, but maybe things had been different before the war. 

“Did we get married when I wasn’t looking, or…?” MacCready asked, amused. 

“Well, we’re dating, aren’t we?” Leigh said, like MacCready was being particularly slow. It  _ was _ an old-timey thing, then. 

“We are,” MacCready said with a tiny rush of pleasure at the words, “but usually you can fool around with whoever you want until you’re married. You take up with Danse, though, and all bets are off.” Leigh looked thoughtful, and then he grinned. 

“Can’t say that I much want to have sex with anyone else, but I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. Cait’s awful pretty.” MacCready’s brain stuttered, providing him with an image of Cait’s naked body, the freckles on her back, on her thighs, and Leigh’s big hands on her waist, slipping down along the curve of her hipbone…

“Uh,” he stammered. “Hey, wait. Cait’s my girl. No hitting on her without me. That’s a rule.” Leigh waggled his eyebrows at MacCready, laughing, his smile brilliant as a poster. MacCready was struck by the sudden urge to kiss him, to run his fingers over those broad shoulders. Leigh was smirking like he was about to say something that would MacCready blush. 

A knock on the door. MacCready and Leigh both turned, Leigh’s eyebrows going up slightly. 

“It figures,” MacCready said, and snatched his gun up. Silence, the door creaking open, and then Knock’s voice announcing that it was time for breakfast. Leigh rose, still chuckling, and squeezed MacCready’s ass on his way by. He was still shirtless. If MacCready had been at all inclined to believe in Atom or any kind of God who did good shit for you if you just prayed enough, he would have accepted Leigh’s back muscles as an answer to his prayers. Judging by the flush on her cheeks, Knock seemed to be having the same reaction. Leigh compounded this by kissing Knock’s hand like the great show-off that he was and earnestly thanking her for the hospitality.

“Are you for real?” Knock said, a flush rising in her cheeks. 

“Nope,” MacCready said cheerfully. “He’s full of preservatives. The Brotherhood of Squeal all gone, then?”

“Perimeter clear, Mayor,” she said, turning from Leigh, her face still flushed. “Come and get some grub.” She scurried up the stairs, leaving him and Leigh in the basement. 

“You like doing that,” MacCready accused. Leigh shrugged. 

“Nothing wrong with making a lady feel pretty,” he said, retrieving a sleeveless shirt from his suit and shrugging it on. The effect of the thin white fabric was mostly to make you wonder about the skin underneath; it was almost worse than the shirtlessness had been. Leigh caught MacCready looking and grinned. “Don’t worry, sugar, you’re the only one for me.”

“You’re a menace,” MacCready said, and headed for the stairs. Leigh caught him around the waist and kissed him on the cheek. 

“Love you,” Leigh drawled, smiling, and shit, it was like getting hit between the ears every damn time. MacCready followed Knock’s sterling example and fled up the stairs, embarrassed. 

Red, Princess and Knock were in the dining hall, eating bread and butter with strips of jerky.  

“Morning,” Red said, looking a little annoyed. “You hear anything about some synth from the Commonwealth killing a squad, because let me tell you, the area is buzzing.”

“No idea,” MacCready said cheerfully, glad that he’d lied about his name on the border patrol. The Brotherhood didn’t know a damn thing about him, and it was best to keep it that way. “I’m headed back to the caverns later today, you want me to take anything down?”

“What are you going to do at the caverns?” Red asked. MacCready shrugged, helping himself to some jerky. 

“Drop off some caps, see how things are doing.”

“Money?” Red said. “Mayor, what in the damn hell have you gotten yourself into?” Leigh came marching in through the door just then. MacCready pointed a thumb at him, serving himself with the other hand. 

“That,” he said, and scooped some grits from the bowl, then sat down at the table. Knock looked faintly impressed, while Red and Princess looked stunned. 

“Hmm?” said Leigh, smiling in a pretty, vacant way. Apparently, he had decided that the easiest way to let MacCready take the lead was to crank up the sex appeal and act stupid. As MacCready watched, he made eye contact with Red and began to ask very earnestly how you went about making grits. 

After breakfast, Red took him behind the shack while Princess and Knock talked to Leigh. 

“Mayor, I ain’t one to tell you what to do, since you never listen to me, but this guy looks like bad news.” MacCready considered this.  

“You’re not wrong,” he said. 

“About him being bad news, or about you listening to me?”

“Both,” MacCready admitted. “But I have a job with him, and I have to stick it out ‘til the end, or there’s going to be some serious trouble. I know… I know I haven’t made good decisions in the past. Hell, some of them have been outright dumb. But this is something I have to do, Red, and I think it’ll work out alright in the end.”

“Well, long as you know what you’re getting into,” Red said. MacCready shrugged. 

“As much as I ever do,” he said, and Red laughed. 

After breakfast, they headed to Little Lamplight. Leigh had traded in his usual power armor for a scruffy overcoat that looked suspiciously like something out of a Silver Shroud comic. Inconspicuous, it wasn’t, but the Brotherhood would be looking for someone in power armor. 

“Your friends don’t like me,” Leigh said thoughtfully as they walked away from Big Town. “Does everyone in Little Lamplight have this attitude?”

“It’s ‘cause you look like trouble,” MacCready said, grinning.

“Oh yeah? Then why’d you let me hire you?”

“I’m not exactly known for my good decision making,” MacCready said, and smiled, knowing it was probably sappy and not caring. It was good to be back on the road, good to be out of the Institute, good to have Leigh by his side, even if they’d had to cross hell to be here. “But it was a good decision. You’re trouble, but hell, I’m trouble too. We’re a matched set, you and me.”

“Aw, you’re getting all sappy,” Leigh said, but he was grinning too. 

 

They made Little Lamplight shortly after noon. Same door, same dim lights overhead, same cave smell. Leigh followed him down into the cavern, stumbling in the gloom, one hand on his gun. MacCready made him put it away; he didn’t want to scare the kids at the barricade. They emerged from the tunnel into the main cavern, walking slowly, hands in the air. It felt weird seeing the gate at this angle after so many years patrolling the other side.

“Mayor MacCready at the gate,” he yelled. There was a gun sticking over the edge of the barricade; good. Whoever was in charge had people on guard duty.

“Mayor’s been gone for years,” someone yelled back. “Click’s in charge now!”

“I’m Mayor MacCready, and I’m coming to visit,” MacCready yelled. There was a commotion, and then someone stuck their head over the barricade. 

“Mayor!” she said. The last time MacCready had seen Click, she’d been eleven, and pissed off about it. There was a brief shouting match – one of the guards didn’t want to let MacCready in – and then the gates swung open. From the sound of it, getting older hadn’t made Click any more mellow. 

Click was behind a barricade, flanked by Knives and Clouds, both of whom were aiming guns at MacCready. Kids. MacCready could have taken them all out with a single grenade. 

“Who’s the mungo with you?” Click demanded. “Why are you here?” 

“My traveling partner,” MacCready replied. “I got lucky on a job, wanted to bring you some caps.”

“Some caps? How many?” Click was trying to glare, but MacCready had been 14 and in charge once, and he recognized the fear in her folded arms, in her act. 

“500,” he said, picking a number at random. He’d owe it to Leigh later, but fuck it. He basically belonged to Leigh anyway, caps or no caps. Besides, Leigh was a do-gooder anyway. Better he give the caps to Little Lamplight than to some random person. 

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Click said, trying to sound off-handed and failing. Next to MacCready, Leigh was looking slightly confused. Someone was up in a tower, shining a laser pointer onto his forehead. MacCready grinned. He’d scared more than a few people off with the same trick. 

He and Leigh walked into the cavern, and the gate screeched shut behind them. Leigh was squinting into the darkness, trying to make out the cave walls, his head moving slightly as he tried to scan for hostiles. MacCready wished him luck. There was no such thing as good visibility in Little Lamplight; the pale lanterns and the humidity covered everything in hazy, rain-slick fog. A couple of kids had come to see the visitor, but no one MacCready recognized. He’d been out for six years. Soon, there wouldn’t be a single person left in Little Lamplight who remembered him, and the gate would be closed to him forever. He shoved the thought away and spoke to Click. 

“How’s the old place looking?” he asked. Up close, she was about up to his shoulder, her arms folded sullenly. 

“Shitty as always,” Click said. She led them through the dimly lit tunnels towards the main cavern, a small shape in the fog, liable to disappear at any moment.  MacCready followed gingerly, almost scraping his head a few times – he wasn’t used to being this tall. Behind him, Leigh cracked his head on a stalactite. MacCready and Click stifled identical snickers. 

“Mungo,” Click said scornfully to him, and then seemed to realize that MacCready was a mungo too, and glanced away. Finally, they reached the main cavern. Everything was much as MacCready remembered it – the flickering lamps, the smell of mold, the slick water pooling on the stones, the children amusing themselves in the towers. 

“Pay up,” Click said. Good for her. MacCready had been a bit worried that the place would fall apart after he left; people had gotten too used to having him there to yell at them. 

“Hey, Leigh, pay the lady, will ya?” Leigh was walking slowly, one hand in front of him to try and catch the stalactites before they hit him. The darkness took some people that way. MacCready had learned to shoot in the dark; it didn’t bother him much. 

“This is the worst tour I’ve ever taken,” Leigh groused, but he dug out a pouch of caps and handed them to Click, who looked faintly surprised. A dim smile crossed her face. 

“What it’s like, out there?” she asked, and MacCready remembered that she was fourteen. Two years more, and she’d be on her way to Big Town. 

“It sucks. Took me a long time to get used to all the daylight. Everyone you meet is an asshole, but if you can get a good base going, it’s not that bad.” Click nodded, then hesitated. 

“Clouds is leaving in three months,” she said. “Do you think you could send someone to come pick him up? I wouldn’t normally ask, but, well…”

“It’s Clouds,” MacCready finished for her. Clouds had gotten his name by constantly day-dreaming and dozing off. Even when he was awake, he wasn’t really. The Capital Wasteland might be safer than it had been when MacCready was a kid, but it wasn’t safe, not for a kid like Clouds.

“I’ll tell them up at Big Town,” MacCready promised. They made a circle of the caverns, MacCready pointing out possible alterations to the barricades, asking about previous people and things. Lucy’s clinic had been turned into a workshop by Click, her chemistry supplies sold off or used up or lost. Most of MacCready’s fortifications were still in place, though, and the library was still intact. MacCready paused at the old bookshelf, a horrible ache beginning to creep in behind his eyes. He’d read the Jungle Book a hundred times when he lived here, but there were no copies anywhere in the Commonwealth. He’d looked. He could take it, of course, but he hated the thought of Little Lamplight without it, hated to think that no other child would ever read it again. A powerful desire struck him to read it again, but it wasn’t enough to pick it up and scan the pages. He wanted to be 14, wanted to be sure his life was in order, wanted Lucy to smile at him and call him Mayor, because he was the one that kept the settlement going.

It was impossible, of course. MacCready was too tall to sit in his old chair, if it even still existed, and he would never sit another shift of guard duty, book in hand, waiting for Knock to come and relieve him. He put the book back on the shelf.

“This is quite the library,” Leigh said, glancing around. 

“Yeah,” MacCready said, embarrassed by the way his voice came out rough. “I used to ask every trader I could for books. For a while, we had them coming in with every shipment. You get real bored, living in a cave.”

“I thought you were joking, when you said that there weren’t any adults,” Leigh said quietly, glancing around. “But it’s really just kids here.” MacCready flashed him a weak grin. 

“Little Lamplight, going strong for over a hundred years.”

“Really?”

“Original founders were some schoolkids from before the bombs. We still have their logs somewhere in the back.” MacCready had read them all one bored afternoon, then thrown them away. People had suffered then, people were suffering now. Big deal. He preferred his reading to be a little more exciting.

“Why didn’t you stay?” Leigh asked. 

“Stay?” MacCready said. “You mean, here? I’m too old.”

“You don’t have to follow the rules,” Leigh said. “These kids could use your help. Look at this – dark all the time, no medicine, barely anywhere to make food.”

“We get by. Besides, I couldn’t come back to Little Lamplight. I’d ruin the place.” It ached like a son of a bitch to say it, but hell, it was true.“You go out, you get all these ideas, all this stuff that doesn’t really belong here. Adults didn’t do these kids any favors. Sure, it would be better if we could send some stuff in, but we can do that without running the place.”

“It’s not like you to just blindly follow the rules,” Leigh said, and that was too much. He just didn’t get it. 

“There’s a certain kind of person who thinks everything belongs to them,” MacCready snapped. “The reason Little Lamplight works is that we don’t take adults. Add someone like me, and it’s just a settlement. Then you get people moving in and out, security gets loose, and next thing you know slavers are sitting on the whole thing. It’s better for everyone if there’s not any traffic. Just because you’re used to telling people what to do, doesn’t mean everyone needs it.”

“This isn’t about me, MacCready. Just because you’re smart and you can get by on your own, that doesn’t mean everyone else can. Look at this.” He gestured to Little Lamplight. MacCready could just about guess what he was seeing – the piles of trash, the way everyone was too skinny, the mold on the walls, the trashcan fires. It made him furious. 

“Look at the Wasteland,” MacCready said, waving a hand at the cavern. “Sure, not everybody makes it out of here, but that’s true of the outside, too. At least the people who get out of here know that the world’s tough and they’re tough too. You want to help? Fix the whole goddamn world. Fix people, so they don’t leave their goddamn kids at our doorstep.” MacCready was so angry he was spitting, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. 

“MacCready?” Leigh said, and blinked, looking surprised. “Hey, I’m sorry.” MacCready inhaled shakily and forced himself to focus. The caverns were making him feel shitty, but that wasn’t Leigh’s problem. 

“Sorry,” he muttered. Leigh was looking faintly worried. “It’s not that bad, honest. Lucy and I were safer here than we ever were outside.” Leigh looked like he wanted to say something, but whatever it was, he swallowed it. They left the library in silence. MacCready paused on the railing and glanced at the ground below, his throat aching with grief. He’d thrown stones from up here when he was a kid, and Lucy had stood next to him and laughed when he missed. 

“Go talk to someone else,” MacCready muttered to Leigh, and walked off. Fuck, he was all choked up like some six year old. It wasn’t like him to be sentimental. Since leaving Little Lamplight, he’d lost things that he didn’t even know he had: his pride, his morals, his money, his wife, and he’d walked it all off. That was life. Shit happened, and you just couldn’t think about it,  or you’d end up in a corner, drinking your life away. But there was nothing else to think about. Lucy was in the crooked tilt of the lamps they’d put up together, in his solitary reflection on the water, in the graffiti on the walls and in the smell of the air. 

His winding tour of the caverns finished at the old gate to Murder Pass. The view was different than he remembered it. He was taller. None of the other kids were there; that was good. MacCready didn't need anyone to see him like this, crying like it wasn’t his fault Lucy was dead, crying like there was anything at all he’d get out of it other than a wet shirt. 

“You fucking baby,” he said, and his voice sounded alien to him. He wasn’t sure who he’d been expecting to hear, but whoever they were, they were long gone. It was just him, Robert Joseph MacCready, former mayor, twenty-two years old and already a widower.

It was a long time before Leigh found him. 

“Hey,” Leigh said gently. He didn’t need to. MacCready knew the sounds the caverns made when people walked, knew how they differed from the sounds the made when shaken by the wind. More knowledge that he’d never need again, as useless as remembering Lucy’s favorite food. 

“Hey,” MacCready said, and breathed out. “We should go.”

“Click wanted us to stay for dinner,” Leigh said. It figured. Wary as they were, these kids didn’t know how to recognize trouble like Leigh, not yet. Leigh was looking at him with concern in his face, but MacCready didn’t want to share. What he could he even say? I screwed up, and someone I cared about died, and I lived to be sad about it like a useless bag of scrap. He swallowed. Leigh was still waiting for an answer. 

“Sure,” MacCready said, and led Leigh back. Dinner cheered him up slightly. They’d started growing berries in a pool of rainwater, and Click had rigged up a bunch of garden plots to grow veggies in. There was no meat, of course, but the corn tamales were good, and the smaller kids were spellbound by Leigh’s stories. He didn’t talk about the world before the war, which MacCready appreciated – just about mirelurks and deathclaws and adventure and firefights. He even left the gory bits in, which MacCready appreciated. There wasn’t a kid over ten in Little Lamplight who hadn’t seen someone die, and the sooner they got used to it, the better. 

After dinner, MacCready thanked them and made his way to the exit.

 

He was almost to the exit when Click came dashing up to him, a strange look on her face. 

“MacCready… how’s Lucy doing?” MacCready felt like he’d been shot. No one had told them – well, it wasn’t as though they got news from the outside that often. 

“She’s dead.” Click’s mouth went hard and flat, but she didn’t look surprised. 

“What happened?”

“We were traveling to the Commonwealth. Had to take refuge from a storm in an old subway station. Some ghouls got her. I tried to help, but I had to carry Duncan.” MacCready tried to smile, to force his face into some kind of expression to pretend that it was okay, but he couldn’t.

“You can leave Duncan with us, if you need to,” Click said at last. 

“What? No. As long as I’m still alive, I’m not going to leave him.” Click peered at him, and then she walked up to him and fastened her arms around him in a hug. MacCready hugged her back, numb. Lucy had gotten on well with Click – they’d worked in the lab together. 

“You and Lucy were great parents,” Click said, her head resting on MacCready’s chest. “I know you did your best to look after her, like you did with us.” MacCready’s throat was choked with grief; he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. He held on to Click, who lay her head on his chest, a few tears escaping down her face. Finally, she pulled away from the hug, lower lip trembling with the effort of not giving in to grief. MacCready would have known that she was in charge without being told; he could see it in the stress on her face. This was her cavern now, and she ran it, like MacCready had, and like Red before him, an unbroken line of children stretching all the way back to the time of the bombs. 

“You’re doing a good job, for what it’s worth,” he said. 

“That means a lot from you, Mayor,” Click said. He could see in her face that it cost her bitterly to smile at him, but she did so anyway. “Good luck,” she said. MacCready echoed her. 

“Good luck.” He turned blindly away from her and stumbled through the gates, one wooden step after the next. His whole body was one bitter ache, worse than the first time he’d left Little Lamplight, like he’d ripped a piece of himself out, like he was bleeding to death with no way to stop. 

“MacCready,” Leigh said. MacCready had forgotten about him. 

“Yeah?” 

“I’m sorry.” MacCready was too numb to process this. 

“Me too,” he replied. “I should have left her in Big Town. I should have known. Me, I can get out of whatever, but not while holding a kid. I wish she’d been holding Duncan, then maybe she would have run and tried to save herself.” Leigh sucked a breath in through his teeth. 

“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Leigh said. 

“Like hell,” said MacCready. “I was the one that suggested we go to the Commonwealth. I  thought… well, it doesn’t really matter what I thought.”

“Sweetheart, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Shut up, Leigh! What the fuck do you know about it?” Tears were welling in MacCready’s eyes, and it made him furious. What a damn waste of water. “You think because I was young, because I’m not rich like you, there was nothing I could have done? Fuck  _ off _ . Lucy and I kept Little Lamplight running for years with nothing but our goddamn wits and fucking elbow grease. I was ten the first time I shot someone, and eighteen when Lucy died. I was smart enough to know better. You want to tell me, oh, forgive yourself, but you can’t even forgive yourself for the fact that the bombs went off, when there wasn’t fuck-all that you could have done about that, either.”

“That’s different.”

“How?” MacCready demanded. “You think ‘cause you were a spy you could’ve stopped it? You’re so fucking important, Leigh, so of course everything you decide is more important than what anyone else does.” 

“MacCready,” Leigh, his voice low and gentle, like he was speaking to a spooked animal. MacCready hated it. He walked faster. Leigh caught up to him at the exit to the caverns and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

“What?” MacCready snapped. 

“I think you should collect yourself a little before we fight anything. I’d hate to run into any raiders now.”

“Fine,” MacCready said, choked with the effort of not crying. He stopped, arms crossed. He didn’t want to look at Leigh. The world tilted, and then MacCready found himself above the ground. Leigh had picked him up. 

“Put me down,” he demanded. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t good tactical practice.” 

“Okay,” said Leigh, and shifted his weight. “But first, will you look at me?”  MacCready forced himself to meet Leigh’s eyes. Leigh didn’t look annoyed at all. He looked a little worried, a little sad. It was an act. It had to be.

“I’m not… I don’t need you to take care of me,” he snapped. Leigh put him down, but he kept his hands on MacCready’s shoulders.  

“Sure, but you’re ahead of me on points and I want to catch up,” Leigh said lightly. “I was way worse the last time I was sad about something.” MacCready wasn’t sad. Sad was a word for kids in caverns, kids who had never lost anything really irreplaceable. There was a hole in MacCready’s chest, and there was no way to get rid of it and there never would be. Bitter comments kept coming to MacCready’s mouth, but he pushed them away. He knew he was being unreasonable, but he didn’t know how to stop.

Leigh shifted, his arms moving, and MacCready let himself be hugged. He should push Leigh away, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. Leigh’s warm body pressed up against MacCready’s own didn’t make MacCready's grief any less, but it made it bearable. God. MacCready didn’t deserve Leigh, didn’t deserve anything, but he was so fucking glad to have him it was terrifying. If Leigh went like Lucy...

No. Never. 

Leigh’s hand was doing little soothing circles on MacCready’s shoulders. MacCready bit down on his grief and looked up at him, studying the inky black of Leigh’s hair and the high, fine arch of his face. 

“How many points is this worth?” he asked. Leigh pretended to think about it. 

“Mmmm, six. If you cash them in, you’ll only owe me four hundred and ninety four bottle caps.” 

“I’m not paying that!” Leigh’s grin was shinier than the sun on an old cola bottle. 

“Then you’ll just have to pay up some other way, because you’re mine, baby.” MacCready found it in him to smile back. 

“Lucky you,” he said. 

 

Leigh insisted on holding hands for a bit as they walked back, and MacCready made fun of him for it for the next mile. They were about halfway to Big Town when MacCready spotted a suit of armor tucked into an alcove by the road. He froze, then kept walking. 

“Leigh,” he hissed. “Someone has your armor.” The two of them started to edge to one side, scanning for cover, and then MacCready heard Red’s voice calling him, oddly muffled by the armor. MacCready squinted, then stopped. The power armor made a beckoning motion, and he and Leigh hurried over. A clank, and then Red stepped out. 

“There’s people in Big Town looking for you,” she hissed. 

“Is everything okay?” MacCready demanded. 

“It’s fine – just take this and go. We’ll see you soon, Mayor.” Leigh glanced at Red, eyes narrow, then stepped past her and started to rifle through the storage compartments in his suit. 

“What did you take?” MacCready demanded, struck by the fear that they might have grabbed Leigh’s stealth suit. Everything else was replaceable, but Leigh would fight whoever he had to to get the suit back. 

“We didn’t take anything, Mayor,” Red said. 

“Don’t lie to me!” MacCready hissed. Leigh stuck his head out. 

“It’s fine, MacCready. Just chems. Lucky for you.” The last was directed at Red. 

“Good luck,” Red said, ignoring him, and turned and ran up the path, vanishing quickly into the darkness of late evening. 

“Man,” MacCready muttered. “We just can’t catch a fucking break.”

“We had a fucking break this morning,” Leigh said, and winked. Despite himself, MacCready felt a little better. 

“That was more like fu– uh, a break to have sex.” Leigh was laughing at him again. He caught MacCready’s face in one warm hand and kissed him, soft and slow in a way that MacCready felt all down his spine. 

“Maybe after we find somewhere to sleep, yeah?” Leigh said, his voice a low rumble. MacCready wanted to hear Leigh speak to him like that in the dark, wanted to feel the hot breath of Leigh’s words against his skin. 

“There’s, uh, a farm near here where we can stay for the night. We should get moving.” 

“Glad you know your way around,” Leigh said, smiling. 

They reached the farmhouse well past sunset, with the moon overhead.

“Guess you’ll finally get to meet Duncan,” MacCready said. Leigh turned so fast his helmet creaked. 

“He’s here?”

“Yeah.” There wasn’t anything else to say. They walked up to the farm, gun holstered to prevent being mistaken for raiders, and knocked on the door. Nothing. MacCready was starting to feel faintly uneasy. The lights in the house were burning, but there was no sign of life in the old house. 

“Let’s go in,” he whispered, taking out his gun. Leigh nodded. They burst into the old farmhouse, MacCready’s pulse pounding, expecting the worst- but there was nothing. No people, no blood, no signs of a struggle. The little room was untouched. A flicker of movement beyond the room, something moving in the darkness, and then X6 stepped from the hallway. 

“MacCready,” he said. “We’ve been looking for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Look at [this amazing storyboard](http://soundssimpleright.tumblr.com/post/147254463188/can-the-chit-chat-what-do-you-want-leigh) of Leigh and MacCready's confrontation at the Rexford! Bringing the cinematic quality to my sad prose.   
> -Ok, ok, we're done with the Fallout 3 references after this, I promise. Click, Clouds and Knives are OCs, since I think all the named characters would be out of there by now.  
> -Little Lamplight is pretty fucked up when you think about it.   
> -Shout out to my beta, Limiculous, for helping me out!


	14. stay the course

When MacCready was younger, he’d been scared of coursers. He hadn’t known anything about the Institute then, about white walls or teleporters or machines that could reach into a man’s mind and rearrange it. He’d only known the Commonwealth legends, the fairy tales passed around campfires late at night. Courser in the morning, traveler take warning. Courser at night, don’t leave the light. Coursers were an omen, a curse on the person who saw them, a premonition of betrayal and murder.

MacCready stood in the warm evening breeze and smelled the scent of blood rising from the old house.

“The Brotherhood knows that you’re here,” X6 said, but MacCready couldn’t make the words have any meaning. There was blood in the house. He walked forward, head thundering, skin twitching in anticipation of a shot, and walked past X6 into the house. Two corpses lay on the ground. Adults. Lana and Patrick. The stink of burned flesh rose from them, the same meat smell that permeated raider houses. It made his throat burn with bile. He walked in haze to the back of the house, past the bloody footprints, down to the basement door, and unlocked the door, then walked down.

Duncan was cowering in a corner, clutching a little pipe pistol.

“Cans,” MacCready said, raising his hands. “Cans, it’s me.” Duncan burst into tears and ran across the little room, gun forgotten.

“Dad,” he squeaked out, and then MacCready had his arms around him, was murmuring reassurances. Duncan had gained weight since MacCready had last seen him, and his hair had grown back in. His voice was louder. He wailed in MacCready’s arms.

“Hey, hey,” MacCready said, patting Duncan’s back. “It’s gonna be okay, big man.” He walked around the little room, taking in the little bed, the scattered toys, the jug of water. This was Duncan’s room, down in the basement where Lana and Patrick wouldn’t have to look after him too much. They’d been kind, unspeakably kind, to take in a sick child, to risk their own lives for MacCready, and now they were dead, leaking into the carpet overhead. MacCready paced a circuit, gently rubbing Duncan’s back like he’d done a million times back in Little Lamplight. It didn’t bother him none to hear kids cry; it had been a daily thing at Little Lamplight.

“L-L-Lana said there were raiders,” Duncan said, wiping his tears away with one chubby fist. “I hided down here, but Lana never let me back out. Is she okay?”

“We took her to Big Town,” MacCready said. “She was hurt a little, and Patrick went with to take care of her.”

“O-oh,” Duncan said, sniffing.

“I’m here with my friend Leigh,” MacCready said, ruffling Duncan’s hair. “I need you to be brave and stay down here by yourself for a little bit while I go talk to him, okay? I won’t take long.” Duncan shook his head no, but when MacCready put him down he accepted it.

“Don’t take long,” he said.

“Of course not, Cans,” MacCready said, and went back upstairs.

Leigh and X6 were talking in the living room, Leigh out of his armor, X6 standing by the door.

“You son-of-a-bitch,” MacCready said to X6. “Why’d you shoot them?”

“I was ordered to,” X6 said. MacCready’s whole body was trembling with the urge to draw his gun, to smash his fist into X6’s face, but he hadn’t survived this long by being brave. He spit on X6’s armor and walked back down to Duncan, shaking. Leigh said something- X6 too- but MacCready couldn’t hear it. He stayed in the basement a long time, and when he woke, it was morning and Leigh was knocking on the door.

“We need to get to a rendezvous point,” Leigh said quietly. Next to MacCready, Duncan was asleep on the bed. MacCready felt sick, like he’d been punched in the face.

“What about Cans?”

“He’s coming with,” Leigh said. MacCready had guessed that, but it still made him sick to hear. Whatever showed on his face, it was enough to make Leigh lean over and whisper an apology.

“I figured,” MacCready said, and let Leigh kiss his forehead. Leigh’s lips on his skin felt as though they were a hundred miles away. “Where are we going?”

“You and Duncan are going back to the Institute, and X6 and I are going up to Sanctuary to work on the vault.” There was a thread of something in Leigh’s voice, but MacCready was too tired to pull on it.

“Good,” he said. “Did you get rid of… you know? Don’t wanna scare Cans.”

“All clear,” Leigh said, voice soft, as if a little sympathy could make any difference at all. “Come and have some coffee.”

X6 was loitering in the kitchen. MacCready mechanically started up the coffee machine, dimly noting that Lana and Patrick had lived well off the money he sent them every month for Duncan, poured himself a cup, and drank. It tasted like hell. It suited his mood fine. He ate mechanically, then put together a plate and started to take it down to Duncan.

“Don’t you want to know where we’re going?” Leigh asked.

“Why? I’m only going to do what I’m told,” MacCready said, annoyed.

“Let me tell you, then,” Leigh said, patient, as though MacCready was throwing a tantrum. He wished, not for the first time, that he was the kind of person to throw a fit and damn the consequences. “We’re going to rendezvous with a transport and get into teleporter range. The Brotherhood is looking for us, so we’ll have to be careful.”

“Right,” said MacCready, and took Duncan’s breakfast tray downstairs.

 

They walked to the rendezvous point, Duncan stumbling along at MacCready’s side until he couldn’t go anymore. Poor kid was still recovering from the illness. MaCready scooped him up and carried him, smiling when Duncan grabbed at his hat.

“Carrying your son will restrict your ability to shoot,” X6 said.

“I can shoot one-handed,” MacCready said flatly. The wild anger from before had faded, replaced with a sick feeling that sat in MacCready’s stomach like a rotten piece of cram.

“Get in the middle and we’ll escort you,” Leigh said. Duncan stared in open admiration at the suit of power armor. He’d been too shy to talk much to Leigh, but an hour of walking seemed to have taken the edge off his fear.

“The suit is so big,” he whispered to MacCready. “I love it.”

“Not cooler than me, right, Cans?” Duncan appeared to be considering.

“It’s really cool,” he said at last. Leigh snickered.

“He got you there, darlin’.”

At last, X6 signaled for them to stop. They were at the edge of a wide clearing, protected from view by the thickly clustered trees. MacCready set Duncan down and watched absently as he poked around, investigating a tree. X6 finished the call he’d made on his headset, then stepped closer, deigning to crunch the tree leaves with his feet. It was almost an announcement; X6 never made any noise unless he wanted to. His presence felt like a knife skating over MacCready’s skin. Just as MacCready was about to tell him to fuck off, he spoke.

“Father ordered me to remove all evidence that Duncan had been in the Capital Wasteland…” he said, uncharacteristically hesitant. As if he had something else to say. A bolt of panic raced down MacCready’s spine as he remembered Red’s panic.

“You didn’t do anything to the people in Big Town, did you?” he asked.

“I didn’t think it was necessary,” X6 said. MacCready stared ahead, fighting down the urge to yell. There was something in this conversation, something he wasn’t seeing. Why was X6 talking to him? X6 never said anything without a reason, and this wasn’t an apology.

A yell from Leigh: their transportation had arrived. A vertibird.

“Bird!” Duncan yelled, and took off towards the plane. MacCready followed at a more leisurely pace, Leigh falling in line next to him.

“Since when do we have air support?” MacCready mouthed.

“Since that’s the vertibird we left behind at the bunker,” Leigh murmured. “Someone was following us. Well, you can’t say Shaun doesn’t have good operational security.”

“Operational security my ass,” MacCready muttered, and got on the bird. The pilot was dressed in brotherhood gear. One of the Institute's bait and switches, then.

“Paladin Reyes,” Leigh said, smiling.

“Just tell everyone, why don’t you?” the pilot returned, sour, and took them up into the air. Duncan was determined to look out the window, forcing MacCready to clutch at him. They rose and rose, Duncan laughing and pointing to the birds outside the windows, X6 sniping at the pilot, asking if he couldn’t make it anymore steady, like maybe he was scared. After a while Duncan got tired and fell asleep, leaving MacCready alone with his thoughts, brain chewing through the day. Lana’s corpse, Little Lamplight, the dusty bunker, X6 whispering to him in the shade of the tree. Hand on his comm, tapping, covering what he was saying. Delivering a warning.

Shaun told me to do it, eh? Shaun told me to clean house. Shaun’s got it out for you, MacCready, so be careful. He could just about imagine X6’s voice shaping the words, even if he couldn’t imagine him ever saying them. Duncan shifted in his arms, warm and smelling faintly of baby, a living reminder of the consequences if MacCready didn’t keep his head down.

 

The vertibird dropped them at the rendezvous point and turned back, Duncan waving cheerfully at the plane.

“Well, I'll see you in a few days,” Leigh said, and kissed MacCready's forehead.

“Good luck,” MacCready said, and then, because he couldn't resist, “don't kill too many useful people.”

“Don't do anything stupid,” X6 said, flat. Huh. MacCready shrugged and scooped Duncan into his arms.

“Close your eyes, little guy,” MacCready said, and then X6 gave the all-clear and there was nothing left but light. They made the Institute with a thump; Duncan immediately started to cry. It wasn't the most comfortable way of traveling. MacCready hushed him, taking in the Institute with one eye. Duncan was there, along with his usual courser guard and some synth MacCready didn't recognize. Don't do anything stupid, he thought, and smiled inwardly. Joke was on Shaun; MacCready hadn't gotten to be a top class sniper by being impatient. He concentrated on hushing his son, walking off the pad and towards his room like he hadn't even seen them. He got halfway down the hall before the Director caught up.

“Sir,” MacCready said, and waited, bouncing Duncan in his arms.

“Mercenary,” Shaun said. “Eve here is an expert in watching over human children. Why don’t you let her take care of your son while you and I talk?” The woman held out her arms; MacCready turned away, pulse rising, shoving down panic. No way were they taking Duncan.

“I don’t think Cans here is ready to go with anyone yet,” MacCready said, clinging to his son and trying not to scowl. “You’ve had a long day, haven’t you, Cans?”

“You’ll have to leave him somewhere when you go out on missions.”

“Yeah, but I’m not leaving yet,” MacCready said. The night before they’d left on the trip, when MacCready and Leigh had been tangled together in Leigh’s bed, Leigh had spoken to MacCready in a low, caressing voice and given him tips on how to lie. “If you can’t think of anything to say, say the truth. But never the truth that someone wants to hear- the truth which is convenient to you.”

“I would hate for your son to interfere with Institute operations,” Shaun said.

“You’re the one who sent for him,” MacCready said, biting back contempt.

“I was forced to send for him because of your mistakes, so that no one would be able to use him against you and Leigh.”

“Thank you, sir,” MacCready said.

“What?”

“Thank you, sir,” MacCready repeated. “I’m glad Duncan is safe here in the Institute.” Shaun peered at him. He didn’t seem put-off by MacCready’s deviation from the script, only interested, as though MacCready was a dog who had done a new trick.

“You really care for your son, don’t you, MacCready?”

MacCready resisted the urge to curl around Duncan, to shield him from the force of that probing gaze. “Yes,” he said.

“Good,” said Shaun. “It’s important to take responsibility for our families. Take until Leigh comes back to get him settled in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It does not serve the Institute for those on the surface to know that Leigh is one of our agents. It may be necessary for you to eliminate your companions in Diamond City.” MacCready breathed in against a bloom of anger. Duncan shifted in his arms, a living reminder of all the reasons MacCready couldn’t just lift his pistol and shoot.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Why are you here, MacCready?” Shaun asked.

“Because Leigh’s here,” MacCready said. “Wherever Leigh goes, that’s where I’ll be too,” MacCready said, and tasted the bitter truth of it like ashes in his mouth. “I’m not real big on being kidnapped from my friend’s house in the middle of the night, but hey, it worked out okay. It’s nice and safe in here for Duncan, and I’ve had worse partners than X6, even if he doesn’t talk much. At least Leigh didn’t want to join the Brotherhood of Steel.”

“I would have thought you’d like them.”

“Nah. They’re a bunch of as--- jerks.”

“And the Institute?”

“What about it?” MacCready asked, and tried to look innocent in the face of Shaun’s glare.

“Are you loyal to it?”

“I’m loyal to Leigh, Duncan, and getting paid, which by the way hasn’t happened yet.” Shaun’s glare was bad, but MacCready had seen worse. “I’m not gonna sell you out, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t have complicated ideals like you and Leigh, I just want my kid and my partner to be safe.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, and some time with them.” Shaun studied him.

“I didn’t think they had family men on the surface anymore,” he said at last. “Good day, Mr. MacCready.”

 

Eve trailed MacCready down to his quarters, bent double under the weight of a huge bag on her shoulders. Her whole body was a flinch; she stayed a few steps back from MacCready at all times. MacCready hadn’t gotten a good look at her earlier; he saw now that she was ugly, eyes set too wide, lips off-center on her strange face. She looked like she had been made, and not well.

“Shaun said that you were experienced at watching children?”

“I am participating in an experiment to see whether a synth can integrate into a human family unit despite our limitations. I have extensive experience looking after Liam Binet.” Eve’s voice was thin when she said ‘despite our limitations’, warm, when she said Liam’s name, with a kind of pride in it. MacCready decided immediately to be kind to her. This was a woman who had suffered through some bullshit. The fact that it would anger Shaun was only a bonus.

“What are your orders?” he asked, and Eve went still and small, clearly expecting a blow.

“I have vaccines suitable for children, to help protect him from the effects of the wasteland, and toys and books, for afterwards.”

“Toys?” Duncan said sleepily. His voice set MacCready's pulse racing. He knew what vaccines were, even if Duncan didn’t, just as he knew that he had no way at all of knowing what they were putting in Duncan. He wanted to slam the door, to send Eve away, wanted to put Duncan somewhere no one would ever touch him. But it wasn’t Eve’s fault, or her choice to be here; she’d just been sent because they didn’t want the real scientists wasting their time on wasteland trash.

“Well, come on in,” MacCready said. “I’m sure Duncan wants to see his new toys.”

 

Duncan cried himself to sleep after the vaccines, but he was up again in the morning, far earlier than MacCready would have preferred to be awake. He woke to the distant sound of shooting and sat bolt upright in bed to see that Duncan had discovered the television. On screen, a courser shot a super mutant in the stomach. Duncan clapped and cheered.

“Good morning, Cans,” MacCready said, his heart still thudding with adrenaline.

“Good morning, Dad,” Duncan said. “The TV works!!! And I found a new book! And new toys. There’s a truck, and it moves, and a plane, and some rocks, and they move, and…” MacCready sleepily got up and poured himself a dose of the horrible Institute protein shakes, relying on the bitter flavor to wake him up. Duncan was still going.

“And I saw a cat, in the book, but it was just a picture of a cat, and I want to know, how did they get the picture so good?”

“Institute magic,” MacCready said, finishing the last of his Institute slop, and went over the shower. “This is going to blow your mind.” It was a good morning. MacCready made breakfast while Duncan poked around the room. Duncan was fascinated by the sink; he wanted to know where the water came from. His arm was a little puffy where he’d been given the shots, but it didn’t seem to bother him. After breakfast, he waddled over to the stack of books and picked one up.

“Wow, Cans, do you know how to read?” MacCready asked. Duncan nodded.

“When I was sick, Lana maked me stay in bed all the time. I like reading.” He frowned then, and put the book back down. “But now I’m better and I can walk around.” MacCready watched sleepily as he stomped around the room, looking at the shelves, thankful that he’d started keeping his guns in the armory. He dozed off after a few hours of reading with Duncan, lulled by the sounds of gunfire on the television. Duncan had fallen asleep in front of the TV, curled up with his blanket and a large cushion.

A knock startled him from his nap. It was Eve, armed with more toys and books.

“Liam is older now. He doesn’t need these as much, and I thought…” Duncan peered at Eve nervously, but didn’t say anything.

“Eve’s brought you some toys, big man,” MacCready said.

“Toys?” Duncan said, shyness forgotten, and waddled over.

 

The days fell into a routine; MacCready would wake in the morning and spend time with Duncan, while in the evenings Eve would watch him while MacCready filled out mission reports or met with Dr. Ayo. It was strange, a hollow echo of the domesticity he’d wanted with Lucy and never had; they’d always been too busy hustling for caps to just sit around. Leigh’s colleagues visited twice, Maria looking to trade some books, Wilhelm for beer and a cigarette and shaky advice on the outside world. There was some kind of big project going on, something that had all the scientists nervous, clustered together in tiny knots in the hallway. MacCready ignored it. If it was important, Leigh would let him know, and if it wasn’t, he would only look suspicious trying to find out. A part of him didn’t want to know. This was the most time he’d had with Duncan in years, tucked in their safe, quiet corner, drinking clear water and reading books. If Leigh had been there it would have been perfect.

On his fifth day back, a knock came on the door as MacCready and Eve were settling in to watch a movie with Duncan. Eve looked puzzled; she shook her head when MacCready glanced at her. MacCready rose and opened the door, Duncan trailing curiously behind him. It was three of Leigh’s colleagues from the lab, clutching bag of supplies and grinning.

“MacCready!” Maria said, grinning. “You ready to party?”

“Hell yeah!” MacCready said, and remembered that Duncan was behind his leg. “I mean… heck, yes. What’s the occasion?” Maria glanced at Wilhelm, who shrugged.

“We’ve finished preparations for upgrading the nuclear reactor,” he said.

MacCready squinted at him. “That sounds, uh, great.”

Maria rolled her eyes. “It’s only what we’ve been working for ever since Leigh got here! You know, energy retention, upgrading battery capacity? Don’t you talk to him at all? It’s his life’s work.” Leigh had maybe said some words in MacCready’s direction about his work at some point, but MacCready didn’t actually remember any of them.

“Uh, he mostly talks at me,” MacCready said sheepishly. “But if it’s a party, I’m in.”

“It’s Leigh’s party,” the third scientist said. Angela, if MacCready remembered correctly. She was blond, with an annoying habit of ignoring anything MacCready said. “His contributions are what allowed us to put together the schematics, and he’s also been taking point on getting the vault together. Why aren’t you helping him on the surface?” Because Shaun doesn’t trust me not to run away, MacCready thought.

“I’m letting Cans here get settled in,” he said. Duncan peered around MacCready’s legs at his name, then hid again.

“Well, bring him too,” Maria said.

 

They set up for the party in the central area of the Institute, MacCready and the others directing synths as Duncan and Eve played on the grass. People were beginning to filter in: a group of facilities scientists unveiled a vat of moonshine to general cheers. Not to be outdone, biosciences announced that they’d cloned brahmin meat, and brought out several cows worth of steak. As the only one with any experience in grilling, MacCready ended up by the fire, teaching Maria and Angela how to tell when the meat was done.  

“I wish I could go see the surface,” Maria said wistfully. “It’s only a vault, but still.”

“Why aren’t you going?” MacCready asked.

“Advanced Systems is staying behind to aid Leigh with the set-up,” Angela said, scowling at MacCready as though he ought to know this already. “Only the other three departments are going. I don’t envy them the experience.”

“Vaults are more or less the same as here,” MacCready said. He hadn’t been in Vault 111 before, but he could guess. “Underground, clean, functional. No rads.”

“Yeah, no rads!” Maria piped up. “Don’t be so negative. We’re going to be walking around in hazmat suits down here while the reactor’s going, while they’re going to be safe.”

“Unless the vault breaks, or raiders attack, or mirelurks invade the vault, or…” Dr. Ayo was signaling in MacCready’s direction, X6 standing at his side. MacCready told Angela to take her food off the grill and hurried over to him.

“Mr. MacCready,” he said. They shook hands. It felt weird not to greet X6, but the one time he’d done it he’d gotten a dressing down.

“What can I do for you, boss?”

“In light of recent events, the director has authorized me to give you X6’s shutdown code.” Ayo fished out a slip of paper and handed it to MacCready. “About time, I say. X6 is an exemplary courser, but we’ve got to have humans making the calls.” MacCready looked at X6; he couldn’t help himself. X6 was blank, back straight, face slack, a silhouette in black, an omen of death, and yet MacCready couldn’t help but feel that he was cringing. He turned his attention back to Dr. Ayo.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Well, read it off,” Dr. Ayo said, and removed X6’s sunglasses. X6’s eyes were blue. There was something like fear in his face before he looked away, his hands trembling slightly. MacCready began to speak.  

“X6, recall code A23795-21,” he said.  X6’s eyes flickered like the last star of light on the television before it turned off, then went flat and glossy, dead as a corpse.  His shoulders slumped. The life drained from his body like water from a punctured canteen.  A sick punch of nausea hit MacCready in the stomach as Dr. Ayo reached out and casually prodded at the lifeless thing’s eye. Not a twitch.

“Completely shut down. I'm sorry about the business with your friends in the wasteland,” Dr. Ayo said. “We keep these best programmed as we can, but there’s always bugs.”

“Can he hear us?” MacCready asked, fighting to keep the horror out of his voice.

“Not at all,” Ayo said. “He’ll be like this for 24 hours, maybe a little less depending on his body chemistry. No adverse effects at all, and we can wake him up whenever we want.”

“That’s impressive,” MacCready said, proud of himself for keeping his voice even despite the vertiginous horror biting at his body. “Can I get a headset? I don’t think I’d do this in a battle, but in case I did for some reason, it would be good to have one.” He cut himself off, vaguely afraid that he was babbling.

“We’ll issue you one with your next field kit,” Dr. Ayo said. “If you ever need to wake him up, a second application of the same code will do the trick. X6, recall code A23795-21.” X6 inhaled a great heaving breath, as though emerging from a lake, eyelids fluttering, his face moving in random twitches.

“See,” Dr. Ayo announced. “No adverse effects at all. I’ll leave you to your party, as I believe Leigh wants to speak with you. MacCready turned, and sure enough, Leigh was advancing across the floor, handsome and tired and perfect, a little smudge of grease on his cheek.

“Leigh,” MacCready said, and scurried across the floor. Leigh caught him by one shoulder, smiling.

“Where you going in such a hurry, darling?” MacCready’s words choked in his throat, unsure what to say. _X6 isn’t human_ , he wanted to say, or maybe _the way they treat X6 is inhuman_ . _Promise me you won’t give all these synths to the Brotherhood just because you hate Shaun._ He swallowed his words and let Leigh scoop him into a kiss that scrubbed him clean of thoughts, left him weak-kneed and smiling.

The sound of clapping filtered dimly into his awareness, and he realized that they were surrounded by a circle of scientists. Leigh was glowing with delight, his smile a promise to every person that saw it that he loved them best. He waved to his son, laughing, looking like a movie still.

“Thank you, everyone!” he yelled over the cheers. “I won’t keep you from the fun too long, but I just want to say- I can’t wait to build a better Institute with everyone!” More cheers. Someone handed MacCready a beer, and he was drawn into round after round of toasts, half of them aimed at Leigh, until both of them were staggering. All around them, the scientists were getting gently trashed. Eve and Duncan had retreated back to the room, leaving MacCready to wrangle a red-faced Leigh.

“It just kills me to be away from you,” Leigh was mumbling. They’d ended up sitting on the grass, Leigh with one arm around MacCready’s waist, his head on MacCready’s shoulder. “It’s going to be really nice after all the upgrades. You’re gonna have a nice gun, and Duncan won’t get sick, and you won't get sick, you’ll be safe…”

“Right, I think you’ve had enough,” MacCready said, amused. He climbed to his feet, Leigh staggering after him, one hand around MacCready’s waist. Back in the room, Duncan was already asleep in his little bed, a note from Eve on his bedside table.

“You need water,” MacCready told Leigh.

“I’m not that drunk,” Leigh said, and straightened with a smirk, the drunkenness vanishing from his face. He walked to the kitchen and poured himself a drink, the sloppy, drunken openness from earlier completely replaced by his usual shining intensity. It made MacCready’s face hot; he really was fucked if he found Leigh’s lies attractive.

“Do you do that just to say in practice?” MacCready asked, and remembered a second too late that they might be being monitored, even now.

“Drink?” Leigh said, lifting an eyebrow slightly. “Maybe.” He finished his water and flopped down next to MacCready on the bed, then started to unbutton his shirt in an obvious invitation. “I haven’t had too many kisses, lately,” he said, half-coy. MacCready groaned. “Would you like to help me practice?”

“You’re the worst,” said MacCready and, unable to resist, clambered into Leigh’s lap and flipped off the light switch.

“How good are you at being quiet?” Leigh murmured, snaking one hand under MacCready’s shirt. MacCready hadn’t drunk much, but he was starting to feel light headed. Duncan was behind a partition and on the other side of a decently big room, but it was difficult to think with Leigh’s hand kneading his ass. A kiss that stole all the breath from MacCready's body, and Leigh rolled them over onto the bed and pulled the covers over them.

“Sweetheart?” Leigh murmured, pressing his hips against MacCready’s ass. A shiver of anticipation shook through MacCready’s body, but he couldn’t. Not with Duncan in the room.

“No,” MacCready said. A beat, and then Leigh rolled over with a little sound of frustration. A moment of bewildered confusion. MacCready hadn’t meant no to everything, but just like that,Leigh had backed off. MacCready felt an embarrassed, startled pleasure. He expected Leigh to be a bastard, a show-off, a habitual liar; he always forgot how careful Leigh was with him, how sweet. He sat up, smiling, glad that no one could see his sappy expression in the dark.

“Not like that,” he murmured, and kissed Leigh, palming the hard muscle of Leigh’s stomach and feeling like a raider with one hand in the safe. “I might need to walk tomorrow.”

“Oh,” said Leigh, and kissed MacCready, one hand grasping at MacCready’s hair, making all his nerves purr in anticipation. Leigh was close against him, warm and firm, one of his big hands on MacCready’s hipbone, sliding under his waistband. Leigh’s skin was so warm, and his hand felt so good pressed against MacCready’s rapidly hardening cock.

They fumbled their way out of their clothes by touch, kissing and biting in the soft dark.

“Lube,” MacCready muttered. Leigh rolled over and started to look through the bedside table, providing MacCready with the perfect vista from which to bite his shoulders. Leigh’s body jerked slightly when MacCready bit his neck; MacCready snickered. At last, Leigh rolled back over and slid one slick hand over MacCready’s dick. Fucking finally.

“Impatient, aren’t you?” Leigh said, and MacCready could hear the amusement in his voice but couldn’t bring himself to fucking care, not when he’d been thinking about Leigh all week, night after night in this cold damn bed, chasing after the smell of Leigh on the pillows. The mission together had ruined him; he was back to wanting Leigh day and night, casually incomplete without the man at his side.

He wasn’t incomplete now. Leigh found him in the dark and took him in hand, and then it was all biting kisses and soft noises and little sighs, MacCready biting down on Leigh’s shoulder and trying not to make noise when he came.

Afterwards, they washed off in the sink. Leigh’s eyelids were fluttering with exhaustion; he leaned sleepily against MacCready and mumbled something indistinct. They fell back into bed, MacCready yawning, barely together enough to remember to pull his boxers for Duncan’s sake.

“I love you,” he muttered sleepily, and Leigh’s arm tightened on his side.

“I love you too,” Leigh mumbled sleepily. “I hope I die before you do.”

“Don’t be stupid,” MacCready said, a shiver of apprehension down his back. “We’re going to live forever.”

 

The next morning, everyone was hazy and hungover. The scientists shuffled onto the teleporter and went off to the vault looking some combination of excited and terrified. MacCready, who didn’t even rate as tipsy, watched them go with surly amusement until his turn came. He stood on the teleporter and was dumped into the bathroom of his and Leigh’s shared apartment.

“Wh--” he said, then slammed his lips shut, fear thrumming through his body. The place was filled with steam; someone had left the faucet running in case of cameras. A drop of water slid down MacCready's neck, uncomfortably close. He took a careful step forward, and hit something with his foot. The stealth suit, humming invisibly on the bathroom floor. He hit the off button and it flared to life in his hands, two pieces of paper falling out as he lifted it. The first was a list of the shutdown codes for all the coursers. The second was instructions.

“Take Rad-X. Go to Shaun’s room. The code for his door is 5672. Make sure you understand how to work the intercom before you take control. Wait until the distraction starts, then start shutting down the coursers. Call them on their individual headsets if you can. Stay alive.”

There was no signature. There didn’t need to be. Son of a bitch. MacCready shrugged out of his clothes, took his Rad-X and smoked a nervous cigarette in his boxers. Goddamn. Whatever Leigh was planning, it had better be a hell of a distraction. He finished his cigarette, flushed it down the sink, and shrugged into the damn suit, then flipped it on, breath shuddering from his lungs. No backing out now, no trace of his reflection in the fogged mirror. Fuck it. He’d murdered better people for less cause.

It was strange to see the Institute so empty, the halls clear of white droids and black coursers. He walked to Shaun’s room feeling vaguely silly, the suit pressing in on him. It felt strange; he kept expecting to see his reflection in the polished surfaces of the stairs, his arms in front as he climbed. He entered the code to Shaun’s quarters slowly, not entirely sure of his fingers, and forced himself to breath quietly as he walked in.

Shaun’s apartments were huge, big enough that they had a staircase in them. MacCready walked in slowly, careful not to make a noise. Above, he heard a noise, a child’s voice. His heart began to thump wildly. He climbed the stairs with weak legs. Eve and Duncan were in a corner of the office, Duncan working studiously on a puzzle. He glanced towards the stairs and MacCready froze, his heart thumping wildly, and then Duncan looked away. Fuck. Why was his son here?

He forced himself to calm down, to breathe, to think. How could he get Shaun away from Duncan? He could make a noise, downstairs. He could fake a call. He could wait, but not too long; whatever Leigh was doing, MacCready needed to have control of the comms by then. He took a couple of cautious steps forward, craning his neck to get a look at Shaun’s desk, heart thumping, palms sweaty. How did Leigh do this shit?

Shaun’s desk was a mess of camera feeds, blinking from room to room. Controlling bastard. One of them was mostly steam; Leigh and MacCready’s room, most like. The camera had been on the living room, thank god; MacCready didn’t really want to think about Shaun watching him and Leigh fuck.

Duncan’s clear, piping voice broke the silence.

“Can I get some juice?” he said.

“Sure,” Eve said and rose.

“I’ll go get it,” Duncan said, waving her back down. “It’ll do me good to get out of this chair while I can still walk.” He stood, and MacCready realized he was between Shaun and the stairs. He stumbled backwards, nearly falling down the stairs, and hurried ahead, hiding in a wall sconce. Shaun walked slowly, like a man in pain, clutching the banister. Well, he’d be out of his pain soon. Leigh hadn’t left instructions, but hell, if he’d said to spare the old bastard MacCready wouldn’t have listened. He owed Shaun, owed him all the synths he’d brought in, owed him for the kidnapping, for Lana and Patrick dead in their own home.  

Shaun reached the bottom of the stairs and shuffled to the fridge. MacCready realized he’d been waiting, as though there would be some kind of signal, and fumbled out his gun. Shaun heard something; he turned slowly, opened his mouth as if to say something. MacCready shot him.

The crack of the silencer was loud in the tiny apartment, the sound of Shaun’s skull cracking against the floor louder. The stench of brains and viscera rose in a warm fog. It was done. MacCready half expected an alarm to go off, or a courser to burst in, but there was nothing. He was blank. He’d expected more, somehow, had thought he’d have something to say. ‘Bet you regret kidnapping me now,’ or something else smart, but it was just another corpse.

Noise from upstairs snapped him from his fugue; he advanced up the stairs and froze. Eve had gotten a sidearm from somewhere and was aiming blindly at the top of the stairs, Duncan clutched in one arm. Duncan was crying. Damn. If it had just been Eve it would have been easy, but he wasn’t taking a shot anywhere near Duncan.

He retreated down the stairs, out of range. MacCready, you idiot, think.

“I’m with the railroad,” he called up the stairs.

“Dad?” Duncan said, wailing, and there was a gasp, the sound of little feet hurrying across the floor. He got to the top, crying wildly, his little head swiveling back and forth. MacCready remembered he was invisible. He switched the suit off and grabbed at Duncan just in time to keep him from falling down the stairs. Eve came to the top of the landing and shot wildly, the bullet clipping MacCready’s shoulder. Duncan was wailing loudly; MacCready checked wildly to see if he’d been hurt. Nothing. Eve looked shocked by the gunshot. Her hand was shaking.

“I’m with the Railroad,” MacCready repeated, his heart thudding uselessly. His instincts were screaming that he needed to tackle her and take the gun, but he couldn’t. Not in front of Duncan. “Please,” he said. “Don’t hurt Duncan.”

Tears sprang into her eyes, and shaking, she put the gun down.

“I hoped so,” she said.

“Dad,” Duncan was saying, crying, clutching at MacCready’s arm. Pain was starting to filter in through the adrenaline, blood spilling from his injured arm. Duncan, he had to protect Duncan, get him away from the corpse downstairs. He walked mechanically to the console, Eve shrinking from him.

“What are you trying to do?” she asked, clutching nervously at her tunic.

“I have the courser codes,” MacCready said, forced to speak loudly over Duncan’s wailing. “I’m going to shut them down one by one.” Eve’s mouth firmed and she went over to the console. MacCready pulled his pistol and shoved it into her lower back, his bad arm protesting the motion.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Sealing the door,” she said, pointing at a switch with shaking fingers. “Deadlock. No one will be able to get in. Can I flip it?”

“Go ahead.” There was a thunk from downstairs. MacCready peered down over the railing and saw that another door had closed over the first, sealing them in. Good. MacCready sat in Shaun’s chair and tried to think: blood was soaking through his shirt, over his shoulder, and Duncan was screaming, hysterical.

“I’ll take Duncan,” Eve said. Duncan’s screaming redoubled, and then dimmed slightly as Eve walked away with him.

“Don’t go downstairs,” MacCready called. Eve took Duncan into a corner, patting him. MacCready swallowed, put on the headset, his head buzzing. This wasn’t his thing. He sat, head buzzing, as he checked and rechecked the controls, unable to concentrate. He checked his shoulder with a stab of panic, worried that he was bleeding out, but the bullet had only taken a chunk of flesh. Slowly, he became aware that it was quiet. Duncan’s sniffles had subsided into sobs. How much time had passed while he was frozen with panic, unable to think? Eve came over, and glanced at him, frightened, then spoke.

“You can go to the camera program by clicking on the camera. On the desktop. Um, may I?” MacCready took Duncan from her and watched suspiciously as she made the camera feeds change and put on the headset. One of the channels showed a courser shooting wildly.

“Go back,” MacCready said, his voice coming out in a squeak. Eve turned the channel and froze. The two of them stared in silence at the sight of a deathclaw rampaging through the SRB.  “The distraction,” MacCready managed. He needed to start shutting coursers down, now.

“Can I have the courser codes?” Eve asked timidly. MacCready swallowed. If she tore up the paper there was no way for him to recover them, but what choice did he have? He took the papers from his pocket and handed it to her. She glanced down, something strange passing over her face, and then put the headset on and brought up a courser on screen.

“HQ to Z2-35,” she said, and MacCready watched the courser on screen. “Recall code A7T55512.” The courser slumped, and a little smile formed at the corner of Eve’s mouth. She glanced at MacCready, then flipped to the next channel.

“HQ to A7-91,” she began.

 

There were twenty-two coursers currently in the Institute; the others were outside, guarding the scientists in the vault. Four of them fell to the deathclaw, and another eleven were deactivated before the deathclaw died. Someone, probably Leigh, had already deactivated all of the Gen 2 robots; they were frozen in place, scattered like bones around the institute.

“Do the coursers that are still alone,” MacCready said. They deactivated another two coursers that were watching for rebellion before the announcement came through the headset, broadcasted on all channels.

“This is X9-27. I believe there is outside interference. All coursers, remove your headsets. Repeat. All coursers, remove your headsets.” An argument broke out over the comm line; one of the coursers didn’t believe him. MacCready and Eve deactivated that one, leaving only four coursers.

“Is there an intercom system?” MacCready asked. Eve nodded.

“They’ll probably stuff something in their ears after this,” she warned, and hesitated. “I think you should deactivate K3-22. She’s the most dangerous.”

They waited until the coursers were in hallway, then turned on the intercom. The coursers scattered at the beep, and for a moment MacCready thought they hadn’t caught any of them, and then the one they’d targeted staggered and fell mid-step. As Eve had predicted, one of them began to recite the alphabet very loudly while the others stuffed their ears with strips from the fallen courser’s shirt.

“Guess this is happening the manual way,” MacCready said. But only one of the coursers split from the group to come up towards them; the other two headed towards the teleporter controls. They switched channels to the loudspeaker and flipped the camera on. Leigh was standing at the controls, talking to someone over his headset, a corpse slumped at his feet.

MacCready hit the intercom button and spoke into the speaker.

“Two coursers heading your way,” he said. Leigh froze, then stopped whatever he was saying over the headset and called Shaun’s computer.

“I don’t have my armor with me,” he said.

“You’re in the teleporter room,” MacCready said. “Can’t you bring in another deathclaw or something?”

“I don’t think the minutemen will be able to get another one on such short notice,” Leigh muttered. “Give me the courser code.” MacCready read it off the speakers, and Leigh wrote it out on the wall in blood.

“Time to find out if it works visually, too,” Leigh muttered. “Did you get everyone else?”

“There’s one headed up to us,” MacCready replied.

“Good luck. Don’t get killed. We’re almost home free.”

 

The courser outside couldn’t get through the blast doors. MacCready picked the lock on Shaun’s safe, hoping for a hidden weapon, while Eve flipped through the programs on Shaun’s computer and Duncan cried quietly in MacCready’s arms. He’d calmed down some, and was just crying in little hiccuping starts now. MacCready didn’t think about it. He couldn’t. He loved Duncan too much to think about him with a courser outside and a gun on his hip; Duncan made him run hot and he needed to be able to think.

There was nothing in the safe. MacCready held Duncan nervously as Eve searched desperately through the computer until she found something called ‘local defense protocol.’  A click, and there was a deafening boom that set Duncan to crying again. The front door was a flaming piece of wreckage, as was the courser.

“Christ,” MacCready said through the ringing in his ears. Leigh’s voice came through the speaker in a rush of static.

“MacCready? MacCready, report.”

“We took care of the courser,” MacCready said.

“No shit,” Leigh said, and inhaled, long and unsteady. When he spoke again, his voice was calm, almost playful.  “Just two for me, right? No problem. By the way, the console is programmed to take you and Duncan out of here in an hour.” He hung up, leaving MacCready in the sick silence with the wild thumping of his heart.

The coursers had reached the control room. The flimsy door lasted only a few seconds. There was no audio. One courser went limp at the sight of the words, and the other shot Leigh. Leigh was so small on the screen, a slumped figure bleeding down against the wall. A scream was climbing into MacCready’s mouth; he couldn’t watch Leigh die. Not again.

“I’m going down,” he said, and handed Duncan to Eve. On screen, the courser shoved a pen through Leigh’s hand, pinning him to the console. MacCready didn’t stop to think; he couldn’t. There was no thinking left in him, only static and a scream.

Eve reached out and switched on his headset, her fingers brushing his cheek.

“I’ll keep you appraised,” she said, and nothing more.

 

MacCready ran, acid in his stomach, mind churning through useless plans. He could get a vantage point from across the Institute; he could bury Leigh with his wife in Sanctuary. He could hop into the grave himself, for all the good he’d be against a single courser. A gasp from the headset: MacCready stumbled, shaking, barely able to stutter out a screamed request for information.

“It’s Leigh! He’s deactivated the courser somehow. Get to him. He’s hurt.” MacCready ran on, grimly, blood leaking from his shoulder into his sleeve, sticky and warm. The stink of burned meat and slaughterhouse smell of meat hit him a few paces from the office, and he pulled his bandana over his mouth, acid despair in his mouth. Some of that smell was Leigh. He switched off the suit and ran the last few steps into the little office. Leigh was in the chair, ashy-faced and bleeding from the nose, blood splattered across his arm and lap, hand pinching shut a rift in his hand.

“MacCready,” he said, and smiled, impossibly sincere. “You wouldn’t happen to have a stimpack, would you, darling?” MacCready fumbled one from his pocket and began to treat Leigh’s hand. His lungs were heaving from the long run down, making it hard to handle the needle. Leigh closed his eyes when the stimpack went in, his body trembling like a brahmin straining against some unmoveable weight, but he didn’t say anything. MacCready finished the hand, then took a step back, forced himself to look. The images came in pieces. It felt like his mind was choking.

Leigh’s front was scorched from laser fire, the courser’s shot having caught him right in the center of mass. His face was smeared with blood, his hand bleeding, a pen jabbed into the meat of his thigh.

“Match my breathing,” MacCready said, registering that Leigh was breathing in short, shallow gasps. He knelt and jerked out the pen, then pinched the cut shut and put the needle through the cut. Ten, nine, eight, and he carefully unpinched the skin. The cut stayed closed, held together by whatever magic went into stimpacks. Leigh had his eyes closed; he stayed pliant and quiet as MacCready wrapped his hand and poked at his cuts.

“That’s everything I can do,” MacCready said at last.

“I guess we made it,” Leigh said, and there was a beep from the console, as if in answer. “What?” he said, and started to move his injured hand, then jammed a button on the console with the other one and clumsily navigated to a different scree. “Fuck. Shit! They put in a command in my delayed entry system.”

“What?” MacCready said. Light was beginning to gather on the teleporter pad; Leigh reached out and punched the button on the front of MacCready’s shirt, and it shivered into life just as X6 appeared on the pad.

MacCready froze. Leigh froze too. X6’s head moved, taking in the scene in one look- the  the code written on the wall behind them, the deactivated coursers, the damage written on Leigh’s body.

“What have you done?” he said, and fired. The blast hit MacCready, knocking him backwards into the wall, and the suit fizzled and died. He lay against the wall, stunned. Eve was whispering something in his ear.

“MacCready?” X6 said, disbelieving, and lowered his gun slightly. Eve’s voice resolved in words.

“... code is 23795-21.”

“X6, recall code 23795-21,” MacCReady repeated dully, and looked up. X6 was standing over him. As MacCready watched, an expression of profound betrayal stole over his features, his body trembling, muscles taut, fighting desperately against the final surrender. The shaking was unbearable, but the blankness that followed was even worse. X6’s body switched off. Leigh shot him, the laser rifle trembling in his hand, and X6 pitched over backwards and landed like a sack of flour on the floor. Leigh kept firing.

“That won’t work,” MacCready said, desperation rising abruptly in his throat. It was unbearable for X6 to lie on the ground in front of him, dead eyes staring upwards. He grabbed his pistol and hesitated for the space of a breath, tears pooling in his eyes, then fired. A long, last breath bubbled from X6’s ruined throat, and then nothing more. MacCready lowered his gun slowly, vaguely aware that his chest hurt. He’d been shot. Wetness ran into the collar of his shirt.

“He would never have gone with the Railroad,” he said, the words tumbling from his mouth like vomit. “He was too loyal.”

“You okay?” Leigh said.

MacCready’s hand was beginning to shake; he lay his gun down blindly and flopped against the wall, nausea rising in his throat, the smell of his own burned skin in his nose.  

“I guess,” he choked out, heaving for breath. “Looks like we win.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- MacCready took less damage from the shot because he has X6's max friendship perk. Don't worry, his friendship with X6 will live eternally [ over here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7352461/chapters/16700773)  
> \- Thanks be to my beta Limiculous for looking over this.  
> -Sorry for the delay! I was without my computer for two weeks.  
> \- There was a lot going on from Leigh's perspective in this chapter; would anyone be interested in a chapter of safe distance about this bit?


	15. life under the gravestones

X6’s sunglasses were spattered with blood; he lay on the floor, unmoving. MacCready’s stomach heaved. He stumbled to one side and threw up, feeling like a child, like a baby. A kid who’d never killed anyone before. Stupid. Pointless. He wiped the acid from his mouth and stumbled back to Leigh, his burned skin protesting every heave of his lungs. 

“Sorry,” Leigh said, reaching out for MacCready’s shoulder. MacCready jerked away from his touch. 

“Sorry for what?” he demanded acidly, and stomped away from Leigh, drawn back to the corpse by some perverse force he couldn’t name. “I was going to have to fucking do it. It doesn’t matter if— if we were fucking friends or some shit. He wasn’t going to survive the Institute. It was him or us.” It was true, but goddamn, it felt so fucking hollow. X6 had given him so much shit out in the field about being fragile, about MacCready’s delicate human bones, but MacCready had fucking survived yet again. If the world ended again, it would be MacCready and the radroaches, picking through the remains of all the people he’d killed just to get a little more time. Torn between triumph and a rage so old it was nearly grief, he didn’t realize he was breathing in shallow, shuddering gasps until Leigh’s voice snapped him out of it. 

“It gets easier,” Leigh offered. A flash of pure animal rage sliced through MacCready, forcing him to shut his eyes against the tempting vision of shoving his fist through Leigh’s face.

“I don’t fucking want it to get easier, Leigh! I don’t want to do this anymore.”  It was one thing when you were trying to protect your people, trying to get money for your wife and kid. MacCready could stomach that; it was a hard world, and if someone had to starve it wasn’t going to be him. But killing people you got along with, people you knew were okay for some fucking ideology was as pointless as pissing in a river. 

“Fuck this bullshit,” MacCready said, and walked the last few steps to the body. It was just— a body. A man in a dark coat, lying on the floor. MacCready retrieved his sunglasses from the ground and fumbled them unsteadily onto X6’s face. He’d never even had a name.

“Hey,” Leigh said, and it was almost gentle. MacCready didn’t look back at him. It wasn’t Leigh’s fault things had ended up like this, but it wasn’t not his fault either. 

“Guess you do things like this all the time, huh?” MacCready said flippantly, staring at the body. He felt like he should go through the pockets, but he didn’t really want to. He knew what X6 would have: spare ammo for that laser pointer the Institute had given him. Nothing else. 

“I’m trying to kick the habit,” Leigh said slowly. “I started when I was fifteen, you know. They had me kill a friend so I could replace him.” He sounded disconnected, almost dreamy. “Now that I look back at it, I don’t think that program was very good for me.”

“I don’t want to hear you reminisce about people you’ve killed, Leigh,” MacCready snapped. The words burst out of him in a shout. 

“Sorry,” Leigh said. “Being tortured always makes me sentimental.” The words cut through MacCready's haze; he was being an idiot. Leigh was hurt, and MacCready was being dumb. Part of him still protested leaving the corpse, but he ignored it. 

“Look at me, acting like an idiot when you’re hurt,” MacCready muttered. He could be angry later. There was work to do. “Come on boss, let’s get these burned clothes off of you.” 

The laser had melted Leigh’s undershirt into his skin. Leigh watched with a dazed, helpless look as MacCready peeled the shirt from his blistered skin, body shaking with little tremors. Shock, MacCready thought. He half-carried Leigh down the hall and into the closest shower, then made him drink water and take some antibiotics. Leigh obeyed with a kind of docile resignation that stuck in MacCready’s teeth and made him want to scream. The whole front of Leigh’s torso was cratered and bleeding, and the leg that had been stabbed was almost useless. Not knowing what else to do, MacCready wrapped him in gauze, tucked him into bed and called Eve. 

“All-clear. Leigh’s alive, but he’s out of it. F-freaking coursers. I could use a hand down here, if you don’t mind. How’s Duncan?”

“Scared that you’re dead. Can I bring him down there?”

“Might as well,” MacCready said. “Try to, uh, avoid the kitchen if you can.”

“Got it,” Eve replied. She didn’t sound worried, or scared, or anything else. Just calm. It was soothing. He listened to her clucking at Duncan as she walked down the stairs, his head buzzing. He felt the edge of panic in his system, like if he said or did the wrong thing he’d walk off a cliff in his head and never come back. Didn’t matter. There was work to do. 

He met Eve outside the room, pistol on his belt and stimpack in his hand, half ready for another attack. Eve’s calm had returned; she set Duncan down a few steps from MacCready and let him walk over. Scared to get in range, MacCready thought, and let himself ignore her for a moment. Duncan was with him, and for a few seconds nothing else mattered. MacCready wanted to pick him up, but his chest was burned. He stood there, trapped, as Duncan clung to his leg and wept. 

“Hey,” he started, then gave up on words. What could he say? He put his hand on Duncan’s mop of brown hair and stroked it until at last Duncan calmed down enough to make words again. 

“I thought you were dead,” Duncan said, sniffling. 

“No way is a single courser gonna take me down!” MacCready said, and knelt so he could look Duncan in the eye. “Your Dad’s too cool for that, Cans.” Duncan nodded, teary. “We’re going to go inside, okay?” Duncan tried to hug him, his little arms pressing against the burned skin on MacCready’s front. He stifled a grunt of pain and gently pried his son off. Eve made eye contact with him over Duncan’s shoulder, her body stiff with worry. Someone had hurt her, he thought, someone had come back from a battle with their blood on fire and knocked her around, but she was still standing. 

“Courser pistol?” she mouthed, making eye contact. MacCready nodded. 

“Are you okay?” he mouthed back, and she nodded. 

“Let’s go inside, where it’s safe,” Eve said to Duncan, and led him into the apartment. Leigh was on the bed, eyes closed, chest rising and falling. Still alive. MacCready felt the sting of tears in his eyes. He slumped into a chair, Duncan clinging tightly to his hand. 

“Are you really okay, Dad?”

“I burned my chest a little, but it’s okay. We have medicine that’s going to make it better.”

“With a needle?” Duncan asked. He watched suspiciously as Eve helped MacCready undo the clasps on the collar and zip open the front of the suit. There was a neat circle of burn damage on his front from about his breastbone to just below his ribs. 

“Whoa,” Duncan said, and started to reach out. 

“Don’t touch that,” Eve said sharply, reading the stimpack. 

“It’ll be a cool scar, later,” MacCready said, petting Duncan’s head to distract himself from the needle. Duncan watched Eve with an expression that seemed to vacillate between horror and keen interest, but at least he’d stopped crying. There would a be a target on his chest when the skin was healed, MacCready thought. A last gift from X6 and the Institute. 

“Dad?” Duncan said. 

“It’s nothing, Cans,” MacCready said hastily, wiping whatever expression was on his face. “Could you get me a drink of water from the fridge over there, Cans?” Duncan waddled to the fridge and brought back some water, and MacCready chugged down some antibiotics. The mad rub of the burn was beginning to fade, bringing some clarity back to his mind. 

“The Brotherhood of Steel attacked the bunker on the surface,” Eve said quietly, still taping gauze to MacCready’s front. 

“No shit? Anyone else get sent back?” Eve shook her head. Duncan didn’t seem to know what was going on, but he didn’t comment, only watched with big eyes. As long as nobody started to yell, he’d probably be fine. 

“I don’t know how to work the teleporter, but no one else has appeared,” Eve said. MacCready let out a long, rattling breath, and tried to gather himself. What would Leigh do? Why did he want it set up like this?

“Are most of the synths down here?”

“Everyone’s in cold storage,” Eve replied. Like Leigh’s wife had been. MacCready snorted. The rage from earlier had fallen away, leaving him tired and a little amused at all the bullshit. It was just another op, and the payout was going to be good. Leigh, you son of a gun. “Come on. Let’s wake him up. I don’t know how to work the teleporter.”

 

Leigh’s bandages were bloody when they checked on him; there was only so much you could do with stimpacks when someone’s entire torso had been crisped like molerat over a fire. Still, MacCready was willing to be he’d be walking around in under a week. He poked the side of Leigh’s shoulder, aiming for unburned skin, and waited for Leigh to jerk awake. 

“I don’t know how you’ve survived all these years. You sleep like a baby.”

“Fuck,” Leigh said, eyes flipping open.  “What time is it?”

“Uh…almost two,” MacCready said, checking the wall clock.

“The Brotherhood will be here at six,” Leigh said. Behind him, Eve gave a small gasp. 

“What?”

“You think they’re going to take my word for it on the Institute being destroyed? You’ve got to get the synths out.” Leigh’s eyes were gleaming feverishly. “The Brotherhood doesn’t know how many there are. Change the data on the computers and print out a few decoys, and they’ll never know. They won’t look for synths they don’t know exist.”

“What?” MacCready said. 

“Decoys?” Eve said at the same time. 

“Biosciences… it’s possible to make a synth with no brain, just organs. They make them for organ transplants. Make a few, shoot them in the head, and burn the bodies. Make it look like we’ve cleared everyone out.” Leigh had a feverish, glazed look on his face; he’d grabbed MacCready’s forearm in a crushing grip. 

“Decoys, no problem,” MacCready said. “Compared to twenty coursers, what’s a little espionage between friends.” Leigh smiled humorlessly. 

“Get going. If the Railroad is still here for whatever reason, shoot them.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” Leigh said. “I can’t stall without looking suspicious, and we can’t afford that. If it comes down to it, killing the two railroad members is better than compromising all the people that have left the building.”

“I hate this fucking spy shit,” MacCready said, exhaling. “And if the Brotherhood comes early?”

“Then we’re all fucked, so get going.”

 

The railroad people came in a group of three, just as Leigh had said they would: a dark-skinned man with the twitchy look of a chem addict, the spy they’d caught back in Diamond City, and a silver-haired woman brandishing a mini-gun. MacCready halfway hadn’t expected the teleporter to work, but Leigh had walked him patiently through the steps over the speaker. Damn technology shit. 

It was 2:15, on the dot. 

“Where’s Leigh?” the spy asked. 

“He’s sleeping off a couple bullets to the torso, so you get me as your guide. Lucky you. Name’s MacCready.”

“We know who you are,” the woman snapped. 

“I had no idea I was so famous. Who are you?” The woman bristled, her minigun coming up slightly; this was a woman who was just itching for an excuse to shoot MacCready.

“I’m Deacon,” the spy said with a sideways look at his friends, “this amazonian goddess is Glory, and that’s Tinker Tom.”

“Great, so we’re all friends now. Follow me. We need to start getting the synths out of the Institute. The teleporter can only take so many people at a time, so we need to get our asses in gear. Do any of you know how to work the teleporter?”

“I do,” the twitchy one said. Great. Well, they’d brought him along for some reason. 

“Any reason we’re on a time limit?” the spy asked. Deacon, that was his name. 

“Coursers will be back on in 24 hours,” MacCready said. 

“So let’s kill them,” the woman said, and spit on the ground. 

“Uh,” said MacCready, feeling stupid. Well, it wasn’t like they were going to want to stay with the Railroad. There was a crackle in his ear; Leigh paging him.  _ “The reactor’s going to explode eventually,” _ he said. 

“Who’s that?” Tinker Tom asked, staring wildly around. 

“Leigh, paging me over the comm.”

“If he’s awake, why isn’t he here?” Glory said suspiciously. 

“You gonna carry him? A courser stuck a pen through his thigh.” They rounded a corner, walking past one of the deactivated coursers. MacCready’s skin crawled just looking at the thing; hunched, shoulders down, dead eyed, held prisoner by some invisible force. One last dose of Institute bullshit. He marched past, stiff-shouldered, into the room where the synths were kept in frozen isolation. They’d loaded them into the little pods like firewood, crammed in next to each other like snack cakes in a package. There were easily a hundred in the room. 

“Let’s get going,” MacCready said. 

 

Getting the synths from the pods was a boring process; they had to wait through the first gasps for air, the confusion, the denial. Some synths were overjoyed, some afraid, some obviously just following orders. A few were angry; one tried to snatch MacCready’s gun from his waist and had to be dragged screaming into a corner by Glory. MacCready didn’t care. He was tired of other people’s lives, tired of the million things that dragged him away from Leigh and his son.

They broke the process down into stages; MacCready and Deacon playing welcoming committee, Glory doing the debrief, and Tom tapping incomprehensibly at the teleporter. An hour ticked by as MacCready ran through the same boring fucking talk over and over--- “Hi, we’re the Railroad. Yes, really. We’re getting you out of here. The surface isn’t that bad. (It is.) Don’t want to go? Too bad.” 

“I wouldn’t have figured you for a synth’s rights supporter,” Deacon said as they sent the last round of synths up to the teleporter. Did this man fucking know him?

“How the heck would you know?” MacCready said. He wanted to spit in the man’s face that he was only doing it for money, but that wasn’t true. He wasn’t going to make shit off of this. He’d done the assassination for Leigh, who had dragged him into it, and he’d help the synths for X6, who had deserved to live as much or more than any of the synths currently shuffling their way to the teleporter. 

“Not a lot of people go into the Institute and come out liking synths,” Deacon said. 

“Synths are assholes just like everyone else, but they don’t deserve this shit. No one does.” Deacon stared at him a long moment, and then he shrugged.

“You going to leave the scientists here? Popsicle-entists. Pop science.” They’d reached the end of the synths section, and the beginning of the scientist section. The scientists had better pods, wider, more plush, more controls. There weren’t many of them. MacCready stared at Maria’s frozen face, her eyes squeezed shut. He thought about Leigh, coming back from the dead, about how unprofessional it was to leave an enemy alive. He thought about X6, dead on the pad. 

“Nah. Waste of bullets,” he said at last. Deacon didn’t say anything. MacCready felt a prickling of dread in his stomach; Deacon was looking at the pods, face still behind his sunglasses. 

“Should have figured you’d be cheap about it,” Deacon said. “Go on ahead. I’ll catch up.” His hand was held casually on his waist, thumb hooked in just above his thumb. MacCready was halfway down the corridor when he heard the first shot. The echo was just fading when he heard the next- and the next- and the next- like nails scraping along his neck. He walked faster. 

 

Glory was at the teleporter, locked in an argument with Tom. 

“We’re already running on back-up battery, Glory, I can’t just make more power-”

“What’s going on?” MacCready asked. 

“Glory wants to get the Gen 2’s out as well, but we don’t have the power for it. There’s too many of them.”

“They could be people,” Glory snapped, waving her hand at the Institute. “Why shouldn’t we get them out? We’re the Railroad, we can’t just leave people behind because it’s inconvenient.” 

A thump around the corner made both of them pause. For a moment MacCready thought that Deacon had somehow gotten in front of him, but it was Leigh. Leigh, walking with a limp, a rifle tucked under one shoulder to use as a crutch, a feverish look on his face. 

“You need to get going,” he said. 

“Why? Because you say so? I don’t believe this bullshit about the reactor exploding, or you’d be on your way out. There’s no reason for you to stay here after us.” Leigh stared at her, tiredness obvious on his face, then spoke. 

“The Brotherhood of Steel will be here in forty-five minutes,” he said. 

“What?” Glory demanded.

“Listen. The Brotherhood doesn’t know how many synths they’re looking for. We just have to change some of the records before they get here, and all those people who just left never existed.” Typical Leigh, MacCready thought. It was a good trick. The Brotherhood didn’t know anything about the Institute, but they knew Leigh- they’d walk in, look at the dead bodies, the shut-down coursers, all the scientists they’d killed up top, and they’d believe him.

“No,” Glory said, the word loud in the cavernous space of the Institute. “No. I’m not fucking listening to this bullshit. The Brotherhood of Steel? I’m not leaving these Gen 2’s to die just so you can look good to your friends.”

“Glory,” Leigh said, and MacCready could almost see the charisma flickering on. “If we let the Brotherhood destroy this place, then you’re free of it forever. All the synths are.”

“Except for the ones we fucking leave to die,” Glory, chin raised high, ready to fight. “You don’t like it? Leave. No one’s asking you to fight in the war. You don’t have to be here.”

“Hasn’t the railroad lost enough people? If the Institute is destroyed, you’ll be able to go anywhere, do anything, and no one will suspect you. No more lynchings, no more suspicion, no more hiding. Haven’t enough people died for this fucking place?” It was a good pitch. Even wounded and tired, Leigh had that pull, that knack for finding the right words. Glory was weakening. 

“Just cut them out of the teleporter,” she said. “You’re a spy. You lie to people. Tell them to wait.”

“They’ve been waiting,” Leigh said. “They moved at the same time we did. Why do you think it was so easy to take-over down here? Everyone was up on the surface, and when the attack down here came, the Brotherhood was already taking over their bunker.” 

“Along with all the synths in there,” Glory said, mouth hard. “Acceptable casualties. Who gave you the right to decide what happens to us?”

“Please,” Leigh said, and it sounded genuinely pained. “If we change the data, we can win without having to fight. The Brotherhood has a teleporter. There’s no way to stop them from getting in. But if we fix this, we can win without losing a single person more.” Glory hesitated, and for a moment MacCready thought Leigh had gotten to her, but then her lips thinned. She spoke. 

“You’re not part of the Railroad, Leigh. You’re not one of  _ us _ . You look like your son, did you know that?” Leigh’s jaw muscles went stiff, rage flashing on his face. Glory continued, spiteful pleasure on her face. “Deciding who lives and who dies.”

“You don’t have the people to fight a war and help the people who just escaped. What’s more important to you?” Leigh pleaded, but Glory’s face was closed, set. 

“Get on the pad, I’m sending you out of here,” she said. 

“Wait,” MacCready interrupted, and held his hands up when Glory swung the barrel of the minigun in his direction. “Let me get my son.” 

“Your son?”

“The Institute took him as collateral,” MacCready said. Glory had the eyes of a wild thing; raider’s eyes.  Eyes like in her head she’d already pulled the trigger on MacCready and stolen everything she needed from his corpse. 

“Fine,” she spat, and turned the barrel back on Leigh. “Try anything stupid, and your boyfriend's dead.” MacCready saluted her, gunner style, pivoted on his heel and headed into the Institute. 

It didn’t take long to throw everything he needed into a backpack: the only things that were really valuable were the magazines and the antibiotics. Everything else he could find on the surface. Duncan didn’t want to leave, but he didn’t want to be left alone either. A little encouragement from Eve, and they walked out of the room. 

“You got any plans for the surface?” MacCready asked Eve. “Make sure they take you to a nice settlement. Leigh’s places are pretty nice.” Eve shrugged. 

“I’d like to be alone, I think. My husband, he wasn’t a bad person. But he was always watching me. He would take notes right in front me about the things I did that were less and more human.” 

“Damn,” MacCready said. The desire to get out of the Institute had become so strong it was almost a physical thirst. “Good luck. I’m going to have a whole lot of whiskey when this is over.” Eve snorted. 

“Whiskey?” Duncan asked. 

“You wouldn’t like the taste,” MacCready told him. 

“Mmm,” Duncan said, clinging to MacCready’s hand. MacCready stroked his head, not sure what to say. He and Lucy were tough, but they’d had a few more years before the world had started to kick their ass. When they were done- when they finally got out of the Institute- MacCready was going to take Duncan up to Sanctuary and bury him in toys and food and not go anywhere for a month. At least. 

They reached the teleporter. Deacon had returned from killing all the scientists; he was huddled in the teleporter room with Tom. Glory was watching Leigh, who was leaning heavily against the wall. 

“About time,” she said. 

“Hey, Glory,” Deacon said, motioning to Tinker Tom. “I got this. Could you come look at this?” Glory scowled and edged towards the control center, gun slightly lowered. 

There was a flash of light, and she vanished from the pad.

“Whoops,” Deacon said. “My finger slipped.” Leigh’s eyebrows went up, but the look wasn’t surprise. It was recognition, one liar to another. 

“You going to need somewhere to stay?”

“Nah, she’ll just yell at me for a bit. I have earplugs ready and everything, it’ll be great.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t want to keep you from your hot date,” Leigh said, glancing at the clock. “If you want to go, now’s the time. Eve, Tom?” Eve stepped hesitantly onto the pad; MacCready thought that she was waiting for someone to tell her to stay. 

“Good luck out there,” he told her. “If you’re ever near Sanctuary, I owe you a beer or two.” She smiled at that, startled, and nodded. Tom walked forward and joined her on the pad. 

“Deacon?” Leigh said.

“I’ve always wanted to spend more time at the Institute,” Deacon said. “Dip me in white paint and I’ll fit right in. Beep, boop, beep.”

“You know that the Brotherhood of Steel is coming, right?” MacCready demanded. 

“Must have slipped my mind,” Deacon said insincerely. He and Leigh glanced at each other, and Deacon shrugged, real big and ostentatious, like he wasn’t potentially writing himself a death sentence. Tom looked— resigned. 

Leigh and Deacon went over to the teleporter, Deacon watching closely as Leigh punched in the coordinates on the pad, and the answer came to MacCready. Deacon didn’t trust them, was wagering his life to make sure that Leigh did what he said he would. Stupid. Noble, and more than a little useless. Tom and Eve vanished in a flash of light, and then it was just the three of them and Duncan. 

“MacCready?” Leigh said, and MacCready shook his head. 

“I’m with you, boss,” he said. I’m not leaving you down here with Deacon, either, not when you’re injured like that. It was Leigh’s turn to look resigned. 

“Well, we’re going to go down to the records room. Keep in touch.” He tapped his com, then nodded to Deacon, and the two of them walked away. MacCready listened to them go, step by step. It felt like they vanished from the earth. MacCready sat down against the wall, back aching, and fished one of the comics from his backpack. 

“Come ’ere, Cans,” he said, ruffling his son’s hair. “Let me tell you about the adventures of Grognak.”

They sat a while, Duncan watching intently as MacCready read through the comic, pointing to each of the words and doing the voices. There was a horrible echo in the room, but the caverns had echoed too. MacCready wasn’t sure– he barely remembered it– but he thought that maybe, once, his mother had read to him like this. 

“Why is he on the ground?” Duncan asked. 

“No one on the ground on this page,” MacCready said, glancing at Grognak. 

“I mean him,” Duncan said, pointing at X6’s corpse. Someone, probably Glory, had dragged him into the far corner. 

“He’s taking a nap,” MacCready said, mouth suddenly dry. 

“Oh,” Duncan said, unconcerned. “I want to take a nap. I’m tired.” He flopped onto the ground in and crossed his hands on his chest in an imitation of X6. 

“That’s…” MacCready said, and stuttered out a laugh. “That’s not how you nap, Cans.” Duncan let out a fake snore. He’d filled out a little, his cheek rounder, the scars from the illness beginning to fade a little. MacCready leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, and Duncan made a face, then remembered he was supposed to be sleeping. All the murder, the running with the Gunners, the bullshit he’d done with Leigh, for the Institute— all that, just so he could have this. It wasn’t much. But you had to have a minimum standard, or you just became a raider, and this was MacCready’s. 

“I don’t want to nap anymore,” Duncan said, sitting up. MacCready poked his cheek, and he squeaked. 

“Me either, buddy,” MacCready said. He could hear Leigh’s uneven steps approaching in the distance, the rifle clacking against the floor with every step, a clock counting down. A thump, a muffled step, an echo in the hallway that made MacCready’s skin shiver with foreboding. It was time to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Glory confirmed SJW. Seriously, though, Isn't it weird that the Railroad destroys the Institute instead of taking it over? If you destroy the Institute, you're effectively ensuring that there will never be any more synths. Also, the collateral damage in synth and human lives is absolutely insane.


	16. victory

The Brotherhood of Steel soldiers came into the Institute two by two, their clanking suits incongruous in the midst of all the Institute silence. MacCready sat with Duncan and wearily watched them go by, almost too tired to jeer. These fucking meatheads, walking in, strutting around, acting like they owned the place, like they’d done anything at all. Like Leigh and MacCready hadn’t handed them their victory, hadn’t been toiling for months down in the disgusting underbelly of the Institute, sleeping every night with their feet in the fire.

Leigh had invited them in, of course. Despite all his pleasure in secrets, or maybe because of it, he loved to put on a show, and this was his masterpiece. A world of white, bound up and handed over like a present. Each new soldier made him glow with pleasure at the arrival of a new audience member, another person to immortalize his legend. They’d be talking about the destruction of the Institute in a decade, and MacCready wondered whether anyone would remember his name. Probably not.

Duncan was heavy in his arms, clinging blindly even in his sleep. Safe, at last, and not sick. Leigh came trotting over; despite all his showboating, the injuries were beginning to show on his frame. Blood was smeared over one cheek, but he wore it like war paint, like the cover of a magazine. The hero. MacCready could have hated anyone else in the world, but not him.

“Hey,” Leigh said. “Can I ask you for one more thing? I want to go check on Shaun’s terminal.” MacCready started to protest, and then he remembered that Shaun was Leigh’s son.

He’d been the last remaining piece of Leigh’s wife, if nothing else.

“Sure,” he said. They took the elevator up. The soldiers were combing through the Institute, shooting the coursers as they stood immobilized, blots of grey on a white landscape. They saluted as Leigh went up, and a cheer reverberated through the Institute. Duncan stirred uneasily.

“Sorry,” Leigh said, and gently placed one hand over Duncan’s head.  

“Why? It’s not your fault they love you,” MacCready snapped. Leigh glanced at him sideways, one eyebrow going up.

“It kind of is. And it’s your fault too, you know.” They reached the top.

“I didn’t want to do this,” MacCready said, and stepped out of the elevator.

“Neither did I,” Leigh said. “But we did it anyway.” He smiled wanly. “They could love you too, you know. I could make you an officer. I could make you a prince.” Leigh’s voice had a dim, drugged edge in it that was part painkillers and part Leigh’s natural madness.

“Sure. Get me that leopard print trailer I’ve always wanted,” MacCready said. They walked into Shaun’s quarters, picking gingerly over the blasted ground destroyed by the landmines.

“Sweetheart, you need to think bigger,” Leigh said. They paused in the ruins of the door. MacCready turned towards Leigh as Leigh turned towards him. The kiss was light, delicate, Leigh being careful of his burned chest, MacCready careful of Duncan, but it felt like gasoline on a fire.

“I got you out like I promised,” Leigh said. Any dreaminess from earlier was gone; he had the look he got when lining up a bullet. “I always will.”

“Took you long enough,” MacCready said, and kissed him again. He wanted all sorts of impossible things: to kiss Leigh, to take his clothes off, to make him better again, to fuck up against the wall. Freedom was making his head spin. Leigh smiled at him dizzily, then reached out and touched MacCready’s face.

“I would never have been able to do this without you,” Leigh said, and it was like Lucy all over again. There were two people in the world, Leigh and Duncan, and it was MacCready’s job to follow them, to protect them as best he could.

“Just let me take a nap before the next one, yeah?” MacCready said. Leigh’s smile was so wide it nearly split his face. They stood there staring at each other until a burst of static startled MacCready back to reality. Someone was paging Leigh on the headset.

“All clear,” Leigh said.

“You still have that headset?” MacCready asked. Leigh grinned like he’d just won a bet.

“Let me show you something cool.” They walked up to Shaun’s desk. On screen, someone wearing MacCready’s hat was walking up to the landing pad. He touched his head; he must have left it behind in the control room. The person glanced sideways, and MacCready caught a glimpse of his profile. It was Deacon.

“What the fuck.”  As MacCready watched, the scribe at the console scowled, shrugged, radioed back, then punched in a number. Deacon vanished from the pad.

“He was working with them all along?” Leigh laughed, then winced, his hand hovering over his bandages.

“They think he’s you,” he said.

“What?”

“You weren’t there when this scribe came down, and the new one doesn’t know what you look like, but it must be you, right? Who else is going to be down here?” Leigh’s smile threatened to split his face.

“Mother of fuck,” MacCready said, and started to laugh. Leigh started to laugh too, one hand over his mouth in a weak attempt to stop.

“That fucking scribe is going to get busted down to initiate,” MacCready said when they’d finally managed to stop laughing.

“Language,” Leigh said, and waved a finger at MacCready. “The kids might hear.” MacCready stuck his tongue out at him. “Who let you have a child?”

“Who’s gonna take him away from me, you mean,” MacCready said, clutching at Duncan. Leigh smiled and winced at the same time, looking a little hollow around the eyes, and MacCready remembered the body in the room below them.

“Hey, I, uh…” Leigh waved his words away.

“Thanks,” Leigh said, and exhaled. “I don’t know if I would have been able to do it.” he glanced at the stairs.  “I’ll be back.” He walked down slowly. MacCready stood, resisting the urge to go after him.

No sound from downstairs, only silence. MacCready tried not to strain his ears, but it was impossible. Dots of grey were appearing on Shaun’s cameras one by one as the Brotherhood soldiers came tromping in, tracking dirt on the spotless white floors. They were smashing consoles, breaking glass, executing coursers where they stood. MacCready watched, mesmerized, as the formerly white Institute swelled with color, with grey and orange soldiers and bloody tracks along the ground. One of the rooms was already burning with the first spark of the Institute’s funeral pyre.

MacCready walked to the stairs and descended slowly. Leigh turned to see him, his face flat and expressionless. His face was wet with tears, but MacCready wasn’t sure if he’d even noticed.  

“Sorry. I lost track of time.” Leigh’s eyes were empty, his hands smeared with blood. It came to MacCready in a flash that Leigh had been touching the body, had taken that red mess of a corpse and covered it with something, folded the arms over the chest, whispered some last words.

“It happens,” MacCready said, and held out one hand. Leigh took it. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

 

In the days and weeks after the Institute was destroyed, everyone in the world claimed to have been there atop the Mass Fusion building when the button was pushed. It was as if the Institute had captured the Brotherhood, had made a new home for itself in the hearts of the conquering soldiers. Souvenirs abounded, passed back and forth as if they were some kind of talisman instead of simple objects. Light bulbs, cigarette trays, synth parts all appeared on the market, peddled by people claiming to sell a real piece of the Institute.

People all across the Commonwealth for a generation remembered where they’d been when they heard the news that the Institute had been destroyed. Reading, writing, sleeping, fighting, fucking; everyone had stopped when they heard the news. Raiders had laid down their guns for a moment; people had danced in the streets.

MacCready’s memories ran a little differently; he’d been holding Leigh up when the button was pushed. Leigh’s hands had been trembling slightly, the tremors too faint for anyone but MacCready to notice. A push, and an explosion that shook the earth. The ragged cheers of the Brotherhood had filtered up through the ringing in MacCready’s ear, and Maxson had smiled. He’d said something to Leigh, and Leigh had said something to him. Leigh had been smudged and weary and bone-achingly handsome, the perfect image of a soldier returning from the war.

“I couldn’t have done it without MacCready,” he’d said to Maxson. Maxson had looked at MacCready for the first time, really looked at him. MacCready had lifted his chin against that probing gaze and glared back, his hand around Leigh’s waist. Maxson might be the most powerful man in the Commonwealth with the Insitute gone, but MacCready was the man with his arm around Leigh’s waist.

“Damn straight,” he’d said, staring Maxson in the face.  A ragged cheer cut through their glaring contest, and then they were moving again, pilots escorting Leigh and MacCready back to the vertibirds. The choppers dropped them in a little settlement back north, and they crawled into one of Leigh’s houses and slept, MacCready and Leigh and Duncan all piled together on one of Leigh’s ostentatious pre-war beds.  

MacCready awoke with a jolt in the middle of the night to the ominous sight of a Mr. Gutsy floating over their bed, menacingly brandishing a buzzsaw, and shrieked like a child. A confused couple of minutes ensued. MacCready scrambled for his rifle. Leigh muzzily tried to grab a pistol, tripped, tangled in the covers, and dragged a missile launcher out from under the bed. Duncan began to cry.

“Oh my goodness gracious,” the robot said.

It transpired that the robot belonged to Leigh. It was wearing a top hat. MacCready stared at it blearily, waiting for the image to resolve itself into something that made sense. Unmoved by MacCready’s increasingly weak hold on reality, the robot began to bustle around the room, apologizing and offering to make him tea and saying other things that didn’t make a lick of sense. It was early and dark out, the stars still shining. Someone was setting off fireworks. The robot was making sounds at him. He turned off the light and went back to sleep.

Snatches of conversation filtered in throughout the night; people knocking on the door, footsteps moving through the house. The robot, making sounds that didn’t quire resolve into words. Leigh. Muffled sobs. Fireworks. The sound of water hitting the floor, as if from a shower. We left the Institute, MacCready thought blearily, and sat up. Leigh wasn’t in bed. Duncan was asleep next to him, and the damn robot was gone. A few steps revealed the existence of another bathroom; typical Leigh, to build such extravagant things everywhere he went. MacCready paused blearily at the bathroom door and went back to bed.

 

Morning arrived, and then noon. The distant sound of Duncan’s voice woke him, and he hurried down the stairs.  He didn’t remember going up the stairs, but apparently Leigh’s bedroom was on the second floor. Downstairs, Duncan was in the kitchen, being hovered over by the robot. He took one look at MacCready and burst into tears.

“I’m sorry,” he stuttered out, cowering away from MacCready.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” MacCready said. He knelt next to Duncan and patted his little head until his son stopped crying.

“You’re so nice,” Duncan said, sniffling. “Lana always yells if I leave my room. She sayed I get them sick.” MacCready felt a sudden flash of rage at the thought of his son locked down in that basement, afraid to come up or look around, then remembered dizzily that Lana and Patrick were dead.  Duncan was sniffling and clinging to MacCready’s hand.

“You’re not sick anymore, okay, Cans? You don’t have to stay in the basement.” Duncan nodded tearfully.

“If I may, Master Jin has a stash of snack cakes in the upper cabinet. Just the thing for a growing child,” the robot said. The light of day revealed that the top hat had not been a hallucination.

“Uhhh, sure,” MacCready said. Duncan calmed down once he had a cake in his hand, and MacCready was finally able to get a look at his surroundings. The house didn’t quite match Leigh’s usual standards of ostentation; it was large, but empty, as if he’d cleaned it up and then moved on. A large patch of empty space stood adjacent to the breakfast table; it took a moment for MacCready to process that it was the largest pane of intact glass he’d ever seen. Ridiculous. Priceless. An open invitation to anyone who wanted to take a shot at the people dining. Outside, the road was littered with spent bullet casings and long, ragged bloodstains, the kind left behind when you were dragging bodies. MacCready drew the curtains shut.

“There was quite the dust-up down the road the other day, but never fear! The Brotherhood have entirely removed the Institute from the area. Oh, it was such a shame to see the old vault get destroyed like that… but it was for a good cause.”

Right. Leigh had sent the scientists somewhere on the surface, and the Brotherhood had cleared it out.

“Where are we?” MacCready asked.

“Sanctuary Hills, sir. It’s gone down in quality over the years, I’m afraid, but I think our community is on the up and up ever since Master Leigh came out of the vault. May I offer you and the young master some pancakes?”

“Sure,” MacCready said. Sanctuary Hills. He’d heard of it, vaguely— it was a Minutemen settlement in the northern part of the commonwealth, up the road from Lexington. He’d spent time at a Gunners outpost a bit south of here, but that was before Leigh’s time. It was a safe, boring area— so safe he’d never made it up. No one to murder for money up here but a bunch of poor farmers, and MacCready wasn’t a raider.

A loud, mechanical sound made him jerk like a startled brahmin, but it was just the robot doing something to the pancake batter. It whirred, the hand attachment moving very quickly, and then came to a stop. Duncan stared, open mouthed, and then began to clap and giggle when the whirring returned.

“Still got the old touch,” the robot said pleasantly. “That’ll be Master Preston at the door.”

MacCready turned as a tall man in a minuteman uniform came striding in through the door. He stopped when he saw MacCready. The two of them stared at each other. The minuteman recovered first; he smiled and waved a hand.

“Preston Garvey. I, uh, run the local minuteman group. How’s Leigh doing?”

“Still asleep,” MacCready said. “He took a shot to the chest from a courser, got burned up pretty badly.” The Minuteman took a step forward. The smile dropped off his face.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” he said.

“You ever been to Goodneighbor? I used to camp out there.”

“No… what’s your name?” There wasn’t any hostility in the man’s tone, but the friendliness from earlier had dropped out of his tone.

“MacCready. Robert Joseph MacCready. I’ve been working with Leigh for months.”

“And before that, you used to run with the Gunners.” Preston’s tone was completely flat. He had a gun on his back, and MacCready was unarmed, and Duncan was right there, completely oblivious to the danger, happily watching the robot cook.

“Yeah, but I quit,’ he said, and took a step backwards. “They’re a bunch of monsters. After Quincy, I…”

“I remember you from Quincy,” Preston said in a hard voice. “Yellow coat’s pretty distinctive. Took out our sentries.” He reached backwards for his gun; MacCready stepped between him and Duncan, hands held high.

“Please,” he said. “Not in front of my son. I know I don’t… I didn’t know what we were going to do. And I quit, and they chased me halfway across the Commonwealth for it. Please.” Preston hdn’t noticed Duncan, or had forgotten about him; he looked over at him now, glanced back at MacCready’s pale face.

“I’m not a monster like you,” he said. “I sure hope you’ve changed. But step one foot out of line, and you’ll pay for it. We’ve spent too long recovering from what you did to us to start over again.” MacCready nodded, breathless, heart thundering. Preston stepped back and walked to the stairs, his hand on his gun, still watching MacCready. MacCready didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until Preston went up the stairs.

“Would sir like some pancakes?” Codsworth asked.

“Sure,” MacCready said. There was a gun on the wall; Leigh’s idea of decor. MacCready snagged it and kept it in his lap; there were barely any bullets, but it made him feel better. He sat with Duncan in his lap and the gun at his side and cut food for his son, watching the stairs.

 

Preston came and went, and his visit opened the floodgates to a whole host of other people; Brotherhood knights who tracked crusty blood all into the house and troubled Codsworth, weather-worn farmers, traders, eager scribes with stacks of books, and once, notably, a supermutant. MacCready watched in shock as the supermutant thundered up the stairs, the wood creaking, and then recovered his wits, sent Duncan to hide in a corner, and hurried up the stairs.

“Strong!” Leigh was saying. “Good to see you again! Have you fought anything good lately?”

“Strong fight puny men in black,” the supermutant rumbled. Its voice was like boulders crashing down a hill. “Men strong, but Strong is stronger. When will Leigh come back and fight with Strong again?”

“Soon,” Leigh promised. “I found a big crab for you to fight. It shoots acid.”

“Good. Big crab will prove challange. Fort Strong is too strong now. Raiders cannot even touch Strong!”

“Great, great. Maybe I can find you a deathclaw.” There was a Brotherhood scribe pressed up against the far wall of the room, clearly trying to hide; she made sudden, panicked eye contact with MacCready. MacCready shook his head slowly, trying to convey that she shouldn’t go for her gun. Leigh and the supermutant were still talking.

“Stay still,” he mouthed. She nodded, her face chalky white. A few more sentences, and Leigh sent Strong down towards the stairs. MacCready scrambled out of the way, and managed to be in the kitchen with his gun by the time it came down the stairs.

“Little mercenary,” it said, advancing on him. “You are good fighter. Have killed many of Strong’s people.”

“Haha, uh, thanks,” MacCready said, clutching at his tiny laser pistol. The thing advanced. Duncan was behind him, staring up in wonder.

“Come fight with Strong sometime,” the thing rumbled, and then left. Its breath stank of rotten meat. Human meat. Duncan cheered.

“Come fight with Strong sometime,” Duncan said, trying to imitate Strong’s low tones in his little piping voice. “Boom! Pow! Strong!!” He lifted his little fists and started to punch the air wildly. “Pow! Boom. Strong smash!” MacCready put down his gun, then went to the front door and locked it, heart pounding wildly.

“That’s it, no more visitors for the day,” he said, and stormed up the stairs.

 

Leigh was lying in his bed; he smirked when he saw MacCready’s facial expression.

“I see you’ve met Strong. Well, re-met him. You should really thank him for saving your life, you know.” The little scribe was still hiding in the corner, pale and wide-eyed. 

“I seem to get rescued a lot,” MacCready said. Leigh was smiling at him, all the color that the bland Institute lights had robbed from him restored. MacCready bent to him, and they kissed. Leigh’s hands were warm along MacCready’s jawline, his smile inviting.

“Maybe next time you can rescue me,” Leigh said warmly. The scribe in the corner made a little squeak; both of them turned to face her.

“Do you mind?” MacCready said. She shook her head, gathered her books, and stumbled out of the room.  They heard the front door slam. Leigh chuckled, and the sound went straight down MacCready’s spine. They moved together, MacCready clambering over Leigh’s legs and onto his lap, Leigh nuzzling MacCready’s shoulder.

“I wanted to kiss you every day I was in the Institute,” Leigh murmured, “but it was so dangerous.” MacCready wanted to kiss the name of the Institute out of his mouth, to kiss him speechless. He caught Leigh’s lip between his teeth and kissed him over and over until both of them were breathless and desperate.

“Damn,” MacCready said, grinning. “I was starting to think the Institute had taken it out of you.”

“Never,” Leigh said, then smiled ruefully. “That said, sex might have to wait until I’m not bleeding through my bandages.”MacCready realized guiltily that he was seated on the leg the courser had put a pen through.

“Sorry,” he said, red-faced, and started to get off Leigh. Leigh snagged him by the waist and rolled him onto the bed. MacCready hit the bed with a little yelp, embarrassed and pleased by how easy it was for Leigh to handle him. Leigh was so precise with his movements that it was easy to forget how strong he was, how broad his shoulders, how big his hands.

“Hey, hey, it’s not that bad. I can still take care of you... “ Leigh said, and waggled his eyebrows.

“I can wait,” MacCready said, smiling helplessly at Leigh. He’d missed this at least as much as sex— Leigh’s casual touches, his smile, his charm. The way he smiled at MacCready, as if the same irresistible happiness had also struck him dumb. MacCready had had so many things he wanted to say, words he’d been choking on, but they’d all vanished in the face of Leigh’s smile, his body, his closeness. His mind had gone blank. He traced the line of Leigh’s jaw, suddenly unsure what to say. It sunk in slowly that they’d done it; they’d defeated the Institute, and all those scribes and farmers and visitors, and everyone else in the Commonwealth too, was free from their grasp, now and forever. Leigh and MacCready had done that. They were free now too, free to lie in this bed and cuddle, free forever.

“You bastard,” MacCready said at last, smiling. “You couldn’t have warned me before the big day?” Leigh winced.

“No, I really couldn’t have,” he said. A look of pain crossed his face, and he curled and hid his face against the curve of MacCready’s shoulder. “I wanted to,” he muttered. It almost sounded like a confession. “I went down there for you, because I love you.” MacCready’s heart gave a little twist; he told it to fuck off. “I know I haven’t always been truthful with you. Thank you for trusting me.”

“You don’t have a free pass.” MacCready lied, and poked Leigh’s face with a finger. The movement made the toy soldier in his pocket poke his leg, and he remembered abruptly that he had wanted to give it to Leigh. “I, uh, have something for you,” he said, and fished it out.

“Oh?” Leigh said.

“I know a toy soldier isn’t much a of a reward for risking your life,” he said. “But this one’s special. My wife, Lucy made it for me.” Leigh was watching him gently, his face soft, calm. Patiently waiting for MacCready to continue. “I never could bring myself to tell her that I was only a mercenary. But when I was with you… for the first time in my life I was able to work towards doing something good. For what I owe you, I don’t know if I can ever pay you back, but I’m with you until the day I die.” He pushed the toy soldier into Leigh’s hands, embarrassed.

“MacCready,” Leigh said, his voice a low whisper. “Robert. I never thought I’d be the one receiving the gift, but I’m glad. Thank you.” He opened a pocket in his pants, and fished out a necklace with two rings on it. MacCready remembered seeing it before, even if it had vanished once they were in the Institute.

“It wouldn't be right to give you the ring my wife gave me. But I’d like to give you my ring.”

 

MacCready was so blissfully, confusedly happy that he couldn’t even scrape it up in his heart to be annoyed when Maxson flew in via vertibird and stole Leigh. There was some kind of conversation, something about the great service MacCready had done for the Commonwealth. MacCready didn’t remember a word of it. He kept looking over at Leigh and grinning. Even after Leigh was gone, the feeling persisted. He felt like he was drunk. If only those old time things, those telephones, still existed; he would have liked to call Cait and tell her the good news.

He caught himself staring out the window and blushed, turning his attention to Duncan, who was engrossed in a Grognak comic.

“I think I proposed to Leigh,” he said. Duncan ignored him. In the kitchen, there was a crash. Codsworth had dropped something.

“My goodness,” Codsworth said. “What did you say?”

“He gave me this ring,” MacCready said, and lifted it up.

“Gracious.” If it was possible for a robot to sound shocked, he was managing it. “Moving a little quickly, aren’t you?” MacCready considered.

“He saved my life from the raiders. I saved him from those feral ghouls. He saved me from the Institute. I guess… I still owe him, but I’m happy to spend the rest of my life working that off.”

“Well, as long as you’re happy together,” the robot said. It sounded cautious. “I suppose the Missus is never coming back.”

“No,” MacCready said. “Or Shaun. But we’ve got to do what we can.”

 

Leigh still wasn’t back by the end of the day. MacCready hoped they were taking good care of him at the Prydwen. He scouted cautiously around the little settlement, then took Duncan down to the river when it became clear that the settlers weren't really interested in talking to him. Probably Preston had talked to them. Ah, well. Some scribes were kicking around the remains of the Institute bunker; he went down and tried to see what there was. Blood stains, corpses, shredded leather and the smell of antiseptic and death. Nothing worth looting. At nightfall he wandered back into the house and read Duncan a couple of books in the lamplight, then tucked him into bed and fell asleep himself.

A knock woke him early in the morning; he checked the people at the door through the window. Sometimes Leigh could build things that were showy and not useful. Two tired looking scribes were at the window, dressed in the their ugly Brotherhood orange. He checked that Duncan was still peacefully asleep and went down to the front door.

“Sentinel Jin requests your presence at the Prydwen,” one of the scribes said.

“Sentinel who?” The scribe sighed.

“He said you’d say that. Leigh Jin, your fiance, wants you at the Prydwen. Commander.”

“Commander?” MacCready said cautiously.

“We’ll explain in the vertibird,” the scribe said. It transpired that the Brotherhood had decided to give MacCready a useless show title as a thank you for services to the Commonwealth, as if they were the teacher and MacCready was a student who had done a particularly good job answering a question. MacCready had half a mind to turn the title down and spit in his face; he was tired and cold and it was so early it was almost late. Couldn’t the stupid ceremony have waited? Resentment rose in him like the tides of a river as they waited and waited for the stupid aircraft controller to give them clearance to land; below them some kind of party was going on. Fireworks drifted dangerously close to them. The moon hung in the freezing air and snatches of drunken singing drifted up to them from below.

MacCready was ready to put his pistol to the pilot’s head and declare this a hijacking when the all-clear finally came through. The vertibird docked, and the two scribes hurried into the Prydwen, not bothering to give him directions. He walked in through the darkened doorway, intending to follow them, and was swallowed into a drunken mass of soldiers. He had arrived at the party.

It was dark and stank of liquor, the whole space filled up with moving, screaming bodies. People were laughing, drinking, singing, and chanting.

“Ad victoriam,” someone yelled, and the ship shook with cheers, the sound vibrating through the floor like a great engine. Then, as one, the soldiers around him all took a drink.  A scarred up soldier with her uniform half-open noticed his empty hands and pressed a beer into his hands.

“You’ve got to drink when they say the cheer,” she told him with drunk earnestness. She took one of his hands, peering intently into his face.

“You,” she said, a flush appearing on her face. “You’re the mercenary! Hey, guys! I found Leigh’s mercenary!” After that, it was easy to get to Leigh; the Paladins elbowed their way through the crowd for him, yelling “Sentinel’s orders.” Leigh himself was enthroned on a stretcher, surrounded by a rapt audience. Despite the IV running into his arm, he looked more like a king than an patient, framed handsome as a picture in the orange brotherhood suit.

“MacCready,” he said, and beckoned him over. MacCready picked his way through the officers; Leigh greeted him with a kiss and a cinematic smile, an actor sure of his stage. He’d done this, MacCready thought, half-dizzy with the adulation floating through the room. From Sanctuary to the Glowing Sea, the Commonwealth was Leigh’s stage, every weapon his prop, every person his stagehand. All the arrows pointed to him, and he was pointing to MacCready, holding out his hand.

“What’s so urgent?” MacCready asked, and slid in next to him.

“Commander,” Leigh said innocently, and slid his arm around MacCready’s waist. “I wouldn't want you to miss the festivities.”

 

MacCready awoke shirtless, hungover and in an unfamiliar place, a stranger’s arm around his waist. He elbowed the arm away in a panic, the sudden movement making his head swim with panic. The soldier only groaned and turned away from him. He lay there for a few moments, trying to figure out where he was. The-the Brotherhood base. He was inside Boston Airport, because the floor wasn’t pitching and shaking like it did in the Prydwen, and thank god for that. Further investigation revealed an assortment of brotherhood soldiers passed out around the room. Heh. Lightweights. But none of them were Leigh, which meant that MacCready had to marshal the courage to sit up and find out how bad his hangover was. He lay there for a moment, eyes squeezed shut, then took a deep breath and stood.

Bad. It was very bad. But not so bad he couldn’t stagger out of the room. Outside, a pair of squires were sullenly pretending to clean up. Kids. The sight made him smile despite the hangover.

“Either of you two seen Leigh?” The bigger of the two squires puffed up, putting her hands on her hips in an attempt to look bigger.

“Who?” she demanded.

“You know, the sentinel. My boyfriend.” That got him everything he wanted. Half an hour later, he’d accrued a pitcher of water, a plate of mirelurk omelette, a clear head, enough Med-X to kill a brahmin, and a new entourage. The kids hadn’t believed him about the Institute until he’d showed them his scar, and then they’d become eager and delighted all at once, eager to fetch him whatever he wanted in exchange for stories.

He was just about to start in on what people were calling the Battle of the Institute when Leigh came striding around the corner, fury visible on his face. He beckoned MacCready into a corner. Alarmed, MacCready shooed the kids away and followed him.

“Did you know Paladin Danse was a synth?” Leigh demanded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Happy New Year!


	17. ad homenim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ad ho·mi·nem: (of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining. literally: to/towards the man

“You can’t be surprised that the guy is a synth,” MacCready said, startled. “He has about as much emotion as a bag full of hammers.”

“Did you know?” Leigh said, totally flat. MacCready stared at him, unsure what to say.  Leigh surely wasn’t this mad at him over Paladin Danse, was he? MacCready hadn’t done anything. He felt for his pistol, but he hadn’t brought a weapon to the ship. Leigh’s eyes flicked to his hand, tracking the movement. 

“I’m not mad at  _ you _ ,” Leigh said. “Maxson…” He smiled, shiny and picture perfect and only slightly alarming. “Maxson ordered Danse executed, even though he didn’t do anything.”

“Sucks to be him,” MacCready said. 

“But was he working for the Institute?” Leigh demanded. MacCready thought back. Aside from the camera, which could have been planted by anyone, he didn’t know. He’d just assumed, because most of the other camera carriers had been synths. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “X and I never checked in with him or anything. The Knight-Sergeant was kidnapped and replaced a month ago, you could ask him.” Leigh got a mean look in his eye.

“Good to know,” he said. “Would have been better to know yesterday.”

“It slipped my mind,” MacCready said nervously. “I was so happy about, you know,” he said, and held up the hand with Leigh’s ring on it. It was too big, so he was currently wearing it on his thumb. Leigh’s face softened and a soppy smile split his face; MacCready would have made fun of him if he hadn’t been smiling back in exactly the same way. It was only a ring, but it felt like so much. Like a promise, like a sign that his life was finally back on track. 

“It’s alright, darlin’,” Leigh said, still holding MacCready’s hand. “I didn’t think to ask you. You’re pretty distracting, yourself.” MacCready knew that the kiss was coming, but it didn’t stop him from going all soft when Leigh’s arm went around his waist. The man was a hazard. He knew was grinning stupidly when they came out of the kiss, but he couldn’t make himself stop. “Keep the replacement our little secret,” Leigh said, his voice low and pitched to make every word a caress. “I just need to grab a little intel, and then we can go home.” 

“I don’t know, I was kind of enjoying being President of the Leigh fan club,” MacCready said, just to be contrary. “Think I can get them to buy me a new gun?”

“If you let anyone else handle your gun, I will be very displeased,” Leigh said, and shifted the hand that was one MacCready’s hip, his thumb tracing the line of MacCready’s hipbone over the layers of fabric. They grinned at each other. This, above all else, what was MacCready thought of as love; that feeling of being co-conspirators, of running a two man con against the world. Leigh bumped his forehead gently against MacCready’s before leaving. MacCready emerged from the corner feeling faintly dazed, a stupid grin plastered on his lips. 

“The Sentinel kissed you,” one of the squires accused, pointing her finger. 

“We’re engaged,” MacCready said, brandishing his ring. The squire shrieked like she’d shot her, prompting groans from the hungover soldiers. 

“Lim!” she shrieked. “They’re engaged!”

 

It cost him a few autographs and a promise to bring Leigh down to see the squires, but he managed to extricate himself from the knot of excited children and escape to a dark, quiet corner. The process of cleaning the base was starting up, but MacCready hadn’t let anyone bully him into helping clean since leaving Little Lamplight, and he wasn’t about to break a six year streak. He popped open a bottle of clean water to get the taste of hangover out of his mouth and waited; soon enough the vertibirds would be up and running, and then he and Leigh would be able to leave. 

Duncan was back at the house with Codsworth. MacCready hoped he was doing okay. He was contemplating places that might have more books for his son when someone tapped him on the shoulder. His back was to the wall. Something was above him. He rolled, reaching for his gun, and a force grabbed him and tossed him back into his corner.

“MacCready,” the thing in front of him purred. It was shaped like a woman, and wore a brotherhood of steel uniform and a smirk. The face was pale, the hair dark and cut short. Memory kicked at him. He’d seen this face before, and not in the Institute. 

“A-ace,” he said slowly. The name jogged his memory. Ace had been a popular major in the Gunners until she’d vanished inexplicably. Recalled, MacCready thought. Or reclaimed? She smirked, pushing into MacCready’s space. MacCready didn’t bother going for his gun. If she was anything like X6, firing his dinky pistol into her stomach would only annoy her. 

“You always had a good memory for names,” she said, tapping a finger against his forehead. “Do you know Lelo?”

“N-no,” MacCready said. “Any reason you’ve got me up against this wall? I’m taken, you know.” Ace did not step back. 

“I know.” Her eyes were black, glittering; she peered at his face curiously, the way a cat might watch a bird struggling on the ground. Slowly, deliberately, she leaned forward. Her lips brushed his cheek. “Thank you for destroying the Institute,” she said. 

“Yeah, no problem,” MacCready managed weakly. Ace’s face was smooth, betraying nothing. She reached forward and drew his pistol from its holster, then stepped back. MacCready watched tap the pistol against her palm, his heart thudding in his throat. 

“I do wished you could have saved some of the other coursers, though,” she said, and closed her hand into a fist. The pistol shattered. MacCready’s pulse spiked wildly. Part of him thought he was going to die, right there, and part of him was numb with astonishment. 

“Wish you could have saved my gun,” he said. Ace chuckled.  

“Fair enough. We were mostly assholes anyway.”

“X6 wasn’t that bad,” MacCready blurted out. Ace tilted her head to one side, watching him like a deathclaw might watch prey thrashing around on the ground. 

“Huh!” she said. “You must be getting sentimental, kid. Tell Leigh I took care of the rest of the records, and to leave Lelo alone.” MacCready nodded nervously. A pause, and then, lightning fast— she ruffled his hair, laughed at his flinch, and pushed a weapon into his nerveless hands.  “Figure you'll need this more than me. Good luck!” She vanished into the corridor, gone like a ghost. Even her footsteps were silent. MacCready sagged against the wall, feeling like he’d run a marathon. It was a decent chunk of time before he could make himself take out the weapon. It looked like a standard issue laser pistol, but it was easily twice the weight. The outside was engraved with a series of tally marks, and a courser designation. A6. Ace. 

He raised it experimentally and fired at a stack of boxes. There was no sound, only a flicker of light. The boxes disintegrated into a pile of ashes. MacCready put the pistol away very carefully. There was the distant sound of running footsteps, and Leigh came careening around the corner. 

“We’ve got to go, there’s a—”

“Courser,” MacCready finished for him. “You just missed her.” Leigh’s face flickered down MacCready’s form, scanning for wounds. “Hey, hey, I’m fine.” MacCready pulled him into the alcove and explained, cuddled close, what had happened. 

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Leigh murmured, stroking MacCready’s face with one big palm. “I would hate to get out of the Institute and lose you now.” 

“Hey, it’s only a courser. No problem for me,” MacCready said, grinning. Leigh was leaning in, close and warm. MacCready titled his head up and kissed him, let Leigh trap him between the wall and his body. 

“Hey,” Leigh said when they broke apart. “Your place or mine?”

 

Despite Leigh’s flirting, the trip back was only a decoy; they touched down in Covenant, then started walking north. MacCready’s mood soured when he realized they were looking for Danse. 

“Aw, come on, I thought we were going home?”

“After this,” Leigh promised. He snagged MacCready around the shoulders and kissed the top of his head. “If you want, I can meet you there. This won’t take long.”

“As if,” MacCready muttered. “I leave for twenty minutes and when I come back you’ll have five settlements that need your help.”

“Helping people is so rewarding,” Leigh said innocently. “That’s how I met my fiance, you know.” 

“Yeah?” MacCready said, a grin splitting his face. Part of him didn’t really believe it had happened; Leigh was so much, and MacCready was just MacCready. 

“Yeah,” Leigh said. His smile stole most of MacCready’s objections out of his mouth. 

“Fine, fine. I’m just saying, we destroyed the Institute. If that doesn’t deserve a day off, what does?”

“Let’s take more than one,” Leigh suggested, and took MacCready’s hand. “You might need some time to recover.”  He wiggled his eyebrows at MacCready, who burst out laughing. Hand in hand, they advanced into the woods. Despite everything, it felt good to be back in the Commonwealth, back with Leigh, out of the weird, underworld of the Institute. This was where he belonged; standing at Leigh’s side, back out on the open road. 

They made it to the bunker and disabled the security without much effort. Leigh’s mouth thinned when MacCready didn’t holster his pistol after the turrets went down, but he didn’t say anything. Leigh could be as sure as he wanted, but MacCready didn’t trust Danse, particularly not with Leigh. Leigh was so delicate right now, still injured, unable to pilot his power armor. If Danse attacked him... well, MacCready wouldn’t give him the chance. 

They walked through the hushed station, past the usual assortment of skeletons. MacCready’s instincts were saying that this was a trap; the feeling doubled when they found the station abandoned except for a rickety elevator. 

“Oh, of course there’s only one way down. I don’t like this, Leigh.”

“It’ll be fine, sweetheart,” Leigh said. MacCready ground his teeth. 

“Don’t sweetheart me, Leigh. Please, at least get out your gun.”

“For you, darling? Anything.” He unclipped his shotgun and loaded a shell, and the two of them descended into the depth of the bunker. 

Danse was an orange figure in the dusty gloom, the color of his flight suit muted by dust and shadow. He peered across the gap at Leigh, his eyes sunken, red-rimmed, his arms limp at his side. Despair perched ugly on his face. 

“I’m not surprised Maxson sent you,” he said, his voice low and resigned. “He never liked to do the dirty work himself.” Leigh glaned at MacCready and tilted his head to one side, and MacCready understood that he was being asked to step aside, to give Danse and Leigh space to talk alone. It itched at him; anyone could fake a few tears. 

“Yes?” he said. Leigh didn’t so much glance at him. 

“Keep watch, please,” Leigh said. MacCready went. Resentment was dug in under his ribs; resentment that he’d had to walk this far on his aching feet, resentment that Leigh cared so obviously and intensely about Danse, about the Brotherhood of Steel, about the great aching wound of the Commonwealth. They’d been heroes once; wasn’t that enough? MacCready wanted to go home and be with his son, and let the rest of the world take care of itself for once. Danse could fight his own battles. 

He was staring upwards when he heard the distant sound of a vertibird, and saw the dark shape rising over the trees. It had been a trap, but Danse hadn’t been the danger. He’d been the bait. MacCready sprinted through the bunker and jammed down the elevator button, pulse thudding in his throat.

Leigh and Danse didn’t glance up when MacCready came careening into the room. Leigh had one arm around Danse’s shoulders, his body curled as if he were trying to shield Danse from the world. 

“Maxson’s here,” MacCready said. Danse’s shoulders slumped further. His eyes were red, as if he’d been crying. MacCready felt a stab of revulsion. Danse wasn’t his friend. He didn’t want to know these things about him. 

“I’ll take care of this,” Leigh said to Danse. 

“Don’t do anything to hurt Maxson,” Danse said. “I should be the example, not the exception.”

“What’s the purpose of rules, Danse? To protect people. What have you ever done, other than try to help? The problem with the other synths wasn’t that they were synths, it was that they were being controlled by the wrong people.”

“No one should have that kind of power,” Danse said. 

“No one does,” Leigh said. “We destroyed the Institute. I destroyed the Institute. Trust me, Danse. I’ve seen evil, and you’re not it.” A long, hushed silence, MacCready’s ears straining for the sound of power armor on the floor above. He was on the verge of physically dragging Leigh back up when Danse finally spoke.

“Sir,” he said, and straightened. It was the first thing that he’d done that made him look like the Danse MacCready remembered. Jaw tight, muscles tense, a look of terrible pain on his face, Danse lifted the holotags from around his neck and handed them to Leigh. “Give these to Maxson, or he’ll just send someone else to hunt me down,” Danse said. Leigh took them and did the stupid Brotherhood of Steel salute, and Danse mirrored him. 

“At ease,” Leigh said. The corner of Danse’s mouth lifted ever so slightly. 

“Get the hell out of here, Leigh,” he said. “Maxson is waiting.”

Leigh and MacCready hurried to the elevator, leaving Danse with the rest of the broken machines. They rose slowly, MacCready straining for the sound of power armor, half-convinced that the Brotherhood would be waiting with miniguns when the elevator opened. Leigh took the moment to eat some mentats: grape, judging by the smell. 

“Hoping fresh breath will keep Maxson from shooting us?” MacCready muttered. The door opened onto empty space.

“You never know,” Leigh said mildly. He swiped MacCready’s pistol from his hip holster and fired, reducing a skeleton to ashes and making MacCready jump. 

“You couldn’t have warned me?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Leigh asked, grinning. He dropped the dog tags in the ashes and pushed them around with his foot, humming. “You’re easy to pickpocket for such a suspicious guy.”

“You’re suspiciously good at pickpocketing,” MacCready retorted. Leigh grinned and wiggled his fingers at him, then retrieved the dog tags, which were now warm and ashy. He tossed them lazily into the air, squared his shoulders, and went unsmilingly out to face Maxson. 

Maxson’s fear had apparently gotten the best of him, since he’d brought a vertibird and a bunch of goons just to finish off the sad sack in the basement. Well: either that he’d brought them to finish Leigh off, in which case they were fucked. MacCready hung back in the doorway, wary of the miniguns, but Leigh strolled forward confidently. He paused about five feet from Maxson, raised the dogtags, then tossed them overhead to Maxson, who caught them. 

“If you knew where he was, why’d you bother sending us?” MacCready muttered. Leigh didn’t react, but Maxson’s eyes narrowed. 

“Good job, Sentinel. I assume the body is inside?”

“It’s an ash pile, I’m afraid,” Leigh said. He held up MacCready’s pistol, then shot lazily at a nearby piece of sheet metal, reducing it to ash. Maxson pursed his lips. 

“You disagreed quite stringently with my orders on the Prydwen, Sentinel, and now you don’t have a body for me.”

“Do you think Danse would give up his dogtags?” Leigh asked. 

“That thing wasn’t a person,” Maxson said. 

“No, it wasn’t,” Leigh agreed. “They’re not programmed to be self-aware. Right up until the end, he insisted that he was a member of the Brotherhood, that there had been a mistake.”

“Was there?”

“I hope not, since I shot him.”

“It wasn’t even human, Sentinel. It was an undetonated bomb. Flesh is flesh. Machine is machine. The two were never meant to intertwine… by attempting to play God, the Institute had taken the sanctity of human life and corrupted it beyond measure.” The sanctity of human life, as if the Brotherhood didn’t take human lives every day. MacCready stared as Maxson began to rant about the evil of the Institute, and the perversion of the natural order, each word more unbearable than the last, until the compulsion to shoot him was almost unbearable. For this, Maxson was throwing away a dedicated soldier? If Danse had been a traitor or a spy, MacCready would have seen no problem in executing him, but to kill him for this nonsense? Danse believed, fervently, blindly, stupidly, in this idiot, and for his blind devotion Maxson wanted to reward him with a bullet. 

Finally, the rant trailed off. Maxson stopped, as if waiting for applause, but MacCready and Leigh just stared at him. MacCready was imagining the sound Maxson would make if MacCready decked him when Leigh spoke. 

“With all due respect, sir, I think you’ve lost sight of what the real problem is,” Leigh said. MacCready glared at his back. What the fuck was he doing? This was no time for a stand-off. Leigh was injured and out of his armor, while Maxson had an armed guard and a big-fuck off gatling laser that he was just crazy enough to use on someone who disagreed with him. Leigh continued, blind to MacCready’s silent protest. “They used to say the same thing about Chinese people, back before the war, sir. ‘The only good chink is a dead chink’, they would say. And then they dropped the bombs. Why not? The enemy wasn’t human.” 

“Danse was not a human being, Sentinel,” Maxson said. 

“Yes, yes, of course,” Leigh said. “But we did this to the world. Not synths. Humans. Focusing on synths does nothing to prevent humanity from destroying the world again.” Maxson didn’t reply, or go for his gun; he just stared at Leigh from across the space between them. 

“Take a vacation, Sentinel,” Maxson said at last. “The Brotherhood appreciates your service.”

“Thank you, sir,” Leigh said. He turned his back and marched into the treeline. Maxson’s gaze shifted to MacCready, who felt himself pinned, caught in unexpected crossfire. He stuck his tongue out at Maxson and ran after Leigh in a panic. A few steps, and he caught up, grabbed Leigh by the shoulders and spun him around to face him.  

“What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded. “We almost got shot! You—” MacCready remembered that Maxson might still be listening. “You did the job anyway! Why pick a fight like that?”

“Because he’s wrong,” Leigh said rigidly. 

“It’s only Danse,” MacCready said uncomprehendingly. Leigh slammed his fist into a tree hard enough to shake all the branches. His facial expression remained blank. 

“I understand that you have never in your life given a shit about justice, or peace, or any kind of ideal whatsoever, but try, for the first time in your life, to have a little fucking sympathy.” There was something feral in Leigh’s voice, something trembling on the edge of violence. MacCready backed away from it, and Leigh, but Leigh was staring at him. Tracking him. 

“Do you know what it’s like to be programmed?” Leigh demanded. “What it’s like to give your whole life to an organization, to give everything that you have, and be discarded anyway? No. You have no idea, because you’ve never given a shit for anyone other than yourself and your family. Small-scale. No ideals. Barely more than a raider.” 

“I am not a raider!” MacCready snapped. How had this conversation became about him?

“No, of course not,” Leigh said contemptuously. “Raiders kill for fun. You do it for money. You’re a mercenary.” MacCready stared at him. He’d thought- Leigh had never expressed anything but admiration for MacCready’s skills, his ability to do anything to survive. He’d thought, stupidly, that the lack of outward judgement meant a lack of inward judgement. He’d thought that Leigh really loved him. 

“I don’t do that anymore,” he said, recovering his voice. Leigh turned away; MacCready grabbed him by the shoulders, shoved him up against the closest tree. “No,” he snapped. “You fucking listen to me, Leigh. I deserted from the Gunners. I knew, I fucking knew when I did it, that I was probably going to die from it, that my son was probably going to die, but I fucking did it. I deserted, because I  _ won’t _ do anything for money.” MacCready’s voice broke. He was teetering on the edge of tears. “How dare you,” he choked out. “How dare you fucking sit on your pile of caps in your nice house and tell me what I will and won’t do for money.”

“This isn’t about money!” Leigh said. 

“You brought it up, not me! Calling me a raider— what the fuck do you know about raiders? What do you know about the Wasteland? All you do is talk about the past, China this and the US that. That has nothing to do with what’s happening now!”

“It has everything to do with what’s happening now!” Leigh snapped. “I’ve seen Maxson before. I know his type. I was there when ideology made the world go up in flames, and I’m not going to sit through it a second time.”

“So, what, you’re going to take over the Brotherhood now too? Is there anything in this whole damn wasteland that you don’t want under your control?” MacCready had meant the words as a taunt, a goad, but the moment they left his mouth he knew they were true. Leigh was planning to get rid of Maxson. That was what the confrontation had been- a last chance to see if Maxson could be prevailed on to listen at all, and he hadn’t. They stared at each other. Realization, slow and awful, was creeping up on MacCready, tightening like a vise around his ribs. 

“You are,” MacCready said. His hands curled into fists. “You are planning to join the Brotherhood.”

“I was already in the Brotherhood,” Leigh said. “What made you think I was going to leave, now that they’re the most powerful faction in the Commonwealth?” 

“Being the leader of the Brotherhood of Steel isn’t a part-time job!” MacCready snapped. “I know what you’re like, Leigh. You don’t want to be a member. You want to run the place. You going to turn around and kill them, when they won’t do what you want? Or will you get with the program and stay up there in that freakin’ blimp, looking down on the rest of us?”

“Come with me,” Leigh said. “We can enjoy the view together.” The joke fell flat. 

“No,” MacCready said. “No! Forget about the Brotherhood of Squeal and come home. Diamond City, Sanctuary, wherever you want. As long as it’s not the Prydwen. I’m not joining the Brotherhood of Steel because you can’t get over mistakes you made years ago! It’s over. Get over it. Come home.”

Silence. MacCready’s heart was racing, his hands itching to throw a punch or to run, but this wasn’t the sort of thing he could remove with a bullet. Leigh’s ring was on his finger. He wasn’t giving it back. If it came down to it, he could pawn it, buy a few days of food for Duncan. He didn’t want to. 

“I can’t,” Leigh said. 

“Why not?” MacCready demanded. “Why not?” Leigh was looking at him— not coldly, but with a certain removal, as if MacCready were a target, or a mark, or as if he wasn’t there at all. 

“I owe it to them,” he said at last. MacCready had been right; Leigh wasn’t with him at all. He was somewhere in the past, replaying whatever nameless deed haunted him. Let it go! MacCready wanted to scream, but it wouldn't do any good. “I know what war does, MacCready. The world changed, but war… war never changes. But this time… maybe I can stop it before it starts.”

“Trying to take responsibility for other people, Leigh? That never works.”

“Only taking responsibility for myself,” Leigh said. “I could run the Brotherhood, and you could run it with me.” He took a step forward. MacCready took a step back. 

“Don’t,” MacCready said. It was almost a sob. “We just got out of the Institute, don’t do this again.”

“We can go home,” Leigh said. “We can take some time and think about it.”

“You can take some time to talk me around before doing whatever you want anyway,” MacCready said sharply. 

“You gave me that soldier,” Leigh said. “I thought this was what you wanted?”

“Wanted,” MacCready said. A tear ran down his face. He hadn’t realized how close to the edge he was, how powerful the urge was to give into grief completely.  Leigh had gotten this idea in his head— and god, when had he ever listened to anyone— he wasn’t going to back out now.  Leigh was leaving him. 

“You can marry the Brotherhood of Steel, or you can marry me,” MacCready said. It sank into the silence between them like a stone. He stared wretchedly up at Leigh, wanting desperately to take it back, but it was impossible. Impossible to join, impossible to contemplate a future without Leigh. But he could do it. He’d have to. Leigh’s mismatched eyes met his; MacCready stared at him, trying to memorize the scar on his forehead, the impossible symmetry of his face, his smile, his beauty.

“Really?” Leigh said. There was that damned smile. Leigh’s face relaxed into it, his real thoughts glossed over by a layer of beauty. MacCready wanted terribly to be convinced, but he didn’t think he could be. 

“I’m not going to follow other people’s orders ever again,” MacCready said. “Not even yours.” He let Leigh advance, this time, stood there stiffly as Leigh kissed him on the forehead, and then Leigh was gone.  Back to the Prydwen. 

 

The walk from the bunker to Diamond City was long and took MacCready past the stupid Chinese submarine that had started this mess. He fired a shot angrily into the water as he strode past; his disbelief and misery had crystallized into an incandescent fury. He felt ready to kill anything that got in his way. His feet took him over the bridge, past the spot where he and Leigh had had their first argument, and down into the city. 

He almost wished that he’d never met Leigh, but even in his dim, fell mood, the thought rang false. Leigh was so much, so handsome, so strong, so good; stupidly, idiotically, foolishly good. So he’d killed some people; so what? MacCready could see it, could feel it in the haunted look Leigh got whenever he talked about the past. It wasn’t doing him any good; he needed to put it down, to let go of it, like MacCready had. 

Barely better than a raider, Leigh had said. But MacCready was alive, wasn’t he? What mattered more than that? Whatever he’d done, he’d had to do it. Hadn’t he?

Raiders drew on him; it was almost a relief to toss the grenades, to lift his rifle and just shoot. It wasn’t hard. It was the thing he was the best at. Barely more than a raider, Leigh had said. He finished the fight, then rifled through the pockets of the dead body. 

Raiders didn’t get married, did they? They didn’t take care of their kids. A voice whispered that MacCready hadn’t taken care of his kid, that he’d been on the edge of death when Leigh came along, that he would never have made it without Leigh’s power armor and Cait’s help.

No, he thought. I went by myself. I went down into that place with Cait, and I didn’t run from that glowing ghoul, though I could have. I don’t like doing this, don’t like scrabbling through filth and taking money off still-warm corpses. But it was a lie. He did like it- liked winning, liked the warm rush of victory, liked divvying up the loot and stocking up on ammo to kill again. 

It didn’t matter if he liked it, he told himself. It was necessary. And there wasn’t anything wrong with winning. Leigh had thrown him into a tailspinl, and MacCready hadn’t even done anything wrong. Leigh was the one being unreasonable, insisting on sticking his neck out when he’d done damn well enough. There was no fixing the world, no going back. Leigh needed to learn that.

MacCready entered Diamond City in a foul mood; he stomped through the gates and went straight for Piper’s house. Cait was on the couch; she looked startled to see him. 

“MacCready!” she said, grinning, and MacCready remembered that they hadn’t talked since the Institute was destroyed. 

“Cait,” he said. She grabbed him in a hug; MacCready resisted the urge to lash out, to drag himself free. It wasn’t Cait’s fault he was pissed. 

“Cait, I’m not a raider, am I?” Cait gave him a look. 

“The hell kind of question is that?”

“Just answer it,” MacCready barked. Cait gave him a disgusted look. 

“Well, do you like to dress up in other people’s blood?”

“No.”

“Do you raid settlements? Do you like to put people in cages? Do you like to fuck girls who can’t say no? You ever been so high you killed your friends?” MacCready remembered that Cait had lived with raiders for years at the Combat Zone, remembered that she hated them. 

“No. Of course not.”

“Well, there you go, you daft idiot. What’s happened?”

“Leigh and I… Leigh’s joining the Brotherhood of Steel.”

“I thought he was already a member,” Cait said. 

“Yes,” MacCready snapped, “but he wants to run it. Apparently he’s got some kind of problem with Maxson.”

“Sounds great,” Cait said.

“No,” MacCready said. He was close to shouting. “He wants me to join the Brotherhood!”

“What’s wrong with that? You joined the Institute, cozied up to that damn courser. Brotherhood at least knows what they’re after.”

“That wasn’t for real. This is real! He wants me to be an officer.”

“Oh no,” Cait mocked. “Looks like you’ll just have to get a bunch of people following your orders. How awful.” MacCready saw red. He stormed out of the house before he could do something stupid, like try to punch Cait. It was easy for her to be flippant; she wasn’t being asked to do anything! The Brotherhood was cold, military, serious. It was just like the Gunners. Leigh might be at the top, but there would be officers under him, people who expected him to shut-up and do what he was told. 

Nick Valentine found him by the edge of the reservoir, angrily throwing rocks into the water. 

“Hey, kid,” Nick said, and offered him a beer. MacCready took it, considered it, and then pitched it as far out into the lake as possible. It landed with an unsatisfying splash, and then was gone. 

“Never liked that kind of beer anyway,” he said, chest heaving. 

“Well, I won’t offer you another one then. What gives? Sheng is getting ready to call Diamond City security on you.”

“He can fuck off,” MacCready said. “This isn’t his pond anyway.”

“True, but it is his water purifier.” MacCready made an inarticulate sound of rage and kicked some gravel into the lake. 

“Fucking— bullshit— Leigh— Brotherhood of Steel!” he said. “Fuck!”

“You don’t say,” Nick said.

“Buzz off, Valentine,” MacCready said. 

“What’s going on, MacCready? You’re not usually this angry.”

“No shit? Leigh wants me to join the Brotherhood of Steel,” MacCready said sourly. “I had enough with the Gunners. Shit pay, or no pay, officers who think they’re better than you… Quincy.”

“Quincy?”

“Come on, Valentine. We all know I was there. I used to be a gunner sergeant. Had my own little unit; they mostly just covered my ass while I did all the sniping. Bunch of fuckers.” MacCready’s anger had faded; he kicked more gravel into the pond, but his heart wasn’t in it. “I’m not a big ooh, rah, rah, kind of guy. I just want Duncan and Leigh to be safe.” Leigh’s name provoked a flare of anger, but even that was muted. Exhaustion was filtering in. Valentine clapped one hand on MacCready’s shoulder. His voice was kind when he spoke. 

“Why don’t you go home to your kid?” he asked. “Take some time to think things out. And don’t yell at Cait. She was worried about you, you know.”

“I know,” MacCready said gloomily. He couldn’t bring himself to apologize, or even talk to her, but he bought some drinks from Bobrov and left them at the Home Plate for her, along with a note apologizing. 

The trek from Diamond City to Sanctuary was even longer, but there was a caravan, courtesy of Leigh’s ever-expanding network of settlements. No one recognized him out of his coat and hat; he was still wearing the borrowed Brotherhood fatigues. He arrived at Sanctuary late at night, exhausted and miserable, and stumbled into Leigh’s house. 

Duncan wasn’t there. In a panic, MacCready ran through the house, looking for him, then out into the settlement. There was a light on in one of the houses; MacCready stumbled in wildly. 

“Duncan—” he said, stuttering out the word. Preston and another two settlers were sitting around a coffee table— Duncan was asleep in a female settler’s lap. 

“Your son’s been crying all day,” Preston said, glaring at him. “You just vanished without telling him anything.”

“A vertibird came for me in the middle of the night,” MacCready said, so relieved he couldn’t even be angry. Duncan stirred at the sound of MacCready’s voice. 

“Dad?” He got up, rubbing his face, and toddled sleepily over to MacCready.

“Cans,” MacCready said, and scooped up his son. “Oh, thank god. You scared me.”

“Dad,” Duncan said, and started to cry. MacCready picked him, up, rocking him back and forth and hushing him. “I thought you left, again,” he said, sobbing. “You didn’t even say goo’bye.”

“Oh, no, Duncan,” MacCready said, hushing him. “I didn’t think I would be gone this long. I had to walk back from Diamond City, took me nearly all day.” Duncan didn’t hear him. He was clinging to MacCready’s neck, still crying. One last little misery in a day full of them. 

“Thank you,” he mouthed to Preston, then set back down the road towards Leigh’s house, bouncing Duncan in his arms. Misery made his steps heavy. His legs ached. He sat down on Leigh’s couch, in Leigh’s house, and bounced Duncan in his lap until his son fell asleep. Outside, the wind shook the trees and threw debris against the windows; anyone outside tonight would have a hard time sleeping. MacCready could almost convince himself that Duncan would be happier in this house with Codsworth than outside with him. Safer, certainly. If not here, than with Piper or Preston or some farmer who wanted extra caps and didn’t mind children, somewhere safe and stable. Leigh would be willing to spring for the caps, and Duncan would grow up better than MacCready had. Would grow up knowing that in the whole world, out of everyone there was, not one person had cared enough to stay with him. 

The old Little Lamplight sing-song sprang to mind: why did your parents leave you? to save some bread / they lost their heads/ because they’re dead. The rhyme went on and on. It had been a game to try and come up with the best reason your parents were gone, a way to talk about the thing nobody talked about. 

No, MacCready thought. Never. Not for the Brotherhood of Steel, not for Leigh, not for anyone. If there was one thing that kept him from being a raider, it was Duncan, and he wasn’t giving him up. 

He martialed his remaining energy and dragged the two of them up the stairs and into Leigh’s bed. The covers were warm, soft, nicer than anything MacCready had ever had or was likely to have, and they pressed down on his body like a tomb. Too exhausted to sleep, he stared up into the darkness, his leg twitching in spastic motions as his tired muscles unwound from the hours of walking. Thoughts crammed wildly into his head, flitting like bloodbugs. He needed a plan. He needed to think of somewhere to keep Duncan, someway to get food, someone who would be willing to help him. 

He needed not to think about Leigh, but it was impossible; Leigh was the point his thoughts circled around, the center of his life, the center of everything. Whatever plot he had to win over the Brotherhood of Steel, it would work. MacCready was sure of it. The Brotherhood would come to love Leigh as much as MacCready did, if not as well, and not a single one of them would ever see him for what he really was, a liar and a stone-cold bastard, an idiot determined to win the impossible fight against human nature. 

He flopped his hand over his eyes. His wedding ring thumped against his forehead. It knocked a kind of rage into him, a cold, sudden fury. How dare Leigh decide, unilaterally, what he and MacCready were going to do? How dare he leave him for that pile of bolts in the sky? Leigh was his, signed and delivered. 

“Asshole,” MacCready said, half-startled by the sound of his own voice, by the sudden awareness that Leigh wasn’t leaving him, not while MacCready still had breath in his body to chase him. Leigh wanted to run the Brotherhood of Steel? It was about time he learned that not everyone was under his control. Had he forgotten who MacCready was?

“You’re messing with the best,” he said, staring sightlessly upwards, the beginnings  of a plan forming in his mind. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout-out to my bro Limiculous for beta-reading this. 
> 
> One more chapter to go. ; )


	18. you play your game, i play my part

MacCready woke to the distant rumble of power armor and sat upright in the bed. It was raining. The window beside the bed revealed a river of lights flowing across the bridge. Headlights. MacCready snatched up his gun, rolled Duncan into a bundle of blankets, and hid him in the attic. Duncan didn’t even stir. MacCready closed the door gently on the hidden compartment and hurried down the stairs.

Summer had given way to fall while they were trapped in the Institute, and the autumn had brought thin sheets of rain. MacCready readied his rifle and crouched in the window, surveying the street. Preston had hurried out without his hat or coat to talk with the Brotherhood, only to be pushed aside. The wind carried snatches of yelling to MacCready, but no one had fired a weapon. Not yet. The suits advanced. MacCready thought of Duncan, tucked up in the attic where no one could find him, and decided not to run.

He pulled the door open before anyone could knock, his pulse thundering in his throat. The wind blew in his face and lights shone in his eyes, making him dizzy and blind, but no one fired. That was a start.

“If you’re looking for Goodneighbor, it’s in the other direction,” he said.

“Where’s Sentinel Jin?” the lead soldier asked. The power armor filtered their voice to a low, inhuman rumble. A shiver passed down MacCready’s back; he’d never seen so many suits anywhere but the Prydwen. This was either a mission or a lynch mob.

“I don’t know,” he said. That got a gun jammed in his stomach. What had Leigh done?

“Mercenary. You may not know what you’ve gotten involved with, but we urgently need to see Sentinel Leigh.”

“I haven’t seen him since yesterday,” MacCready said, and carefully placed his hands on the back of his head. It killed him to just surrender like this, but he had to keep Duncan safe. “We had an argument, and he left. Back to the Prydwen.”

“What did you argue about?”

“He was mad about Paladin Danse,” MacCready said. He couldn’t see anyone’s face. At any moment somebody in this mob might decide that they were tired of talking and plant a bullet in his stomach. “I told him, who cares. It’s only a synth.”

A shiver ran through the crowd, whispers mixing in with the sound of summer rain. The lead sentinel nodded. His massive arm swept forward, brushing MacCready aside like so much debris. The mob filed into the house, their feet smearing mud across Leigh’s bright, pre-war rugs, and began to search. MacCready was confined to the couch. A nervous scribe held a gun on him while the rest of the Brotherhood searched every cabinet and closet as if they were going to find Leigh hiding in a fucking bucket. Adrenaline gave way to exhaustion, and he began to doze, his mind blurred with tiredness. He was asleep when the all-clear was sounded, and didn’t wake until the end, when his mind registered the silence.

He jerked back into consciousness and found a suit of power armor towering over him, the red eyes gleaming like something out of a nightmare.

“We’re headed out, mercenary. If Sentinel Jin gets into contact with you, tell him that the Brotherhood is searching for him. We’ve left a holotape on the table.”

“What am I, a mailman? I’ll tell him.” The slap hit with enough force to knock him against the armrest, the edge of the gauntlet slicing a fine line on his cheek.

“See that you do,” the soldier said, and MacCready could do nothing but sit on the couch, his face burning, as the rest of the soldiers filed out. The moment they were all gone, he seized the holotape they’d left and ran upstairs to pop it in Leigh’s terminal.

Static, then the sound of a voice speaking. It was Maxson.

 

“Official Brotherhood of Steel Communication, dated September 30th, 2088.

Sentinel Leigh. I have reviewed the tapes and found your challenge to be legitimate. As the challenged party, I choose sunrise tomorrow, the first of October, as the time for our duel. There will be three rounds; one round of bare-handed fighting, one with weapons, and one in power armor. If three rounds is insufficient to determine a victor, we will repeat them until a winner is determined.”

A pause, and the sound of someone shuffling around papers. Preston had appeared on the stairs part of the way into the recording. He and MacCready stared at each other, dismayed. Maxson cleared his throat and continued.

“The loser will be given a full military funeral, and their assets will be reclaimed by the Brotherhood of Steel.

If either side is not present at the appointed time, the duel will be considered to have been forfeited, and the loser will be charged with dereliction of duty, but I expect to see you. We disagree on many things, Sentinel, but you are not a coward.

I will see you on the field of battle.

Elder Maxson signing off. Message complete.”

 

A moment of breathless silence, and then MacCready turned to Preston.

“I’ve gotta stop him,” he said.

“What–” Preston began. A horrible breathless laugh escaped MacCready’s mouth, interrupting Preston’s question. He couldn’t help himself. A hysterical disbelief had taken ahold of him.

“I leave that idiot alone for a day and he does this! I swear, the man’s got less common sense than a bag of chips. He’s lucky he even made it this far.”

“What are you going to do?” Preston asked.

“I’m going to go find him! And sit on him, if that’s what it takes. He can’t fight Maxson tomorrow! He can barely even walk in his power armor.” MacCready grabbed the wire that led to the secret attic compartment and yanked. The trapdoor in the ceiling opened, and the stairs came tumbling down. MacCready scrambled up and retrieved Duncan, who was still sleeping.

“Do you even know where he is?” Preston asked. “He hasn’t contacted us since yesterday, and you don’t seem to be on good terms with him at the moment.”

“Oh, I’m mad as hell,” MacCready said. “He’s a dumbass and I’m gonna have a talk with him about signing me up for shit I don’t want after all this is over. But he’s still my fiancé, and there’s no way I’m letting him pull this bullshit.”

“Fiancé?” Preston said. MacCready flashed him the ring.

“He proposed yesterday, and he’s not getting out of it this easy.”

“And your son?” Preston said. MacCready started to come up with a smart remark, then froze. Preston hadn’t done anything to Duncan the day before, but there was no reason to assume he’d take him for a second day. The man hated him, after all, and why wouldn’t he? MacCready had killed his friends for money.

He ducked his head, looking away.

“Duncan’s not any of your business,” he muttered. “I’ll find somewhere safe to keep him.” He looked down at the little bundle on the bed and tried to think of safe places to take his son. Piper, maybe, or Cait. Somewhere that the Brotherhood couldn’t get to him. Preston was watching him; MacCready fought down the urge to tell him to fuck off.

“Thanks for watching Cans yesterday,” he mumbled. “I know I haven’t given you any reason not to hate me, but Duncan didn’t do anything. He’s a good kid. When this is all over, Leigh and I will find somewhere to live, and you won’t have to deal with me ever again.”

Preston didn’t reply. MacCready busied himself getting a pack together– his suit, his weapons, food, medicine. Rain was shuddering against the window, and he and Duncan would both need Rad-X if they were going to go out in the storm.

“Your son can stay here, MacCready,” Preston said. A flash of lightning illuminated the room, casting long shadows against the far wall. Preston didn’t seem angry. His voice was calm when he spoke. Resolute.

“Don’t get me wrong,” the Minuteman continued. “I still don’t trust you, and I haven’t forgiven you for Quincy. I don’t think I ever will. But you’ve got the best chance of all of us of getting to Leigh, and like you said, your son didn’t do anything. Leave him here.”

“If you…” MacCready’s throat was suddenly dry. “If you do anything to Duncan....”

“Like I could have done anytime yesterday? Get over yourself, MacCready. Go find Leigh… and hurry. I think the Brotherhood is setting up a perimeter around the settlement.”  

Outside, there was the sound of a generator powering up, and then a flood of silvery light came blazing through the window. The Brotherhood had set up floodlights on the bank opposite Leigh’s house. A shudder passed through MacCready; Preston and the other Minutemen might be here, but this perimeter was for him. They were using him as bait, to draw Leigh out. He planted a kiss on Duncan’s forehead, pulled on the stealth suit, and was gone from the house before the first soldiers came knocking on the door.

 

MacCready’s first task was to get out, and it was a difficult one, even with the stealth suit and the pouring rain as cover. The water actually created an outline around him, making him more visible than before, and the Brotherhood– twitchy motherfuckers– were shooting at anything that moved. MacCready backtracked away from the river after narrowly avoiding being shot, and hurried back into the town. Leigh would have been furious at the sight of the settlers huddled in their houses, afraid to exit. He would have said something. He would have marched out there and gotten those shit-eating soldiers to listen to him, but Leigh wasn’t here.

It was just MacCready, his rifle, his wits, and a two hundred year old stealth suit. He’d done more with less. He dodged a clump of Brotherhood soldiers at the bridge and walked along the river until it became narrow enough to cross. He’d taken Rad-X before leaving the house, but it didn’t lessen his miserable discomfort with the irradiated water sloshing over his boots. He hurried across and took shelter under a tree.

The Brotherhood had set up an outpost on the road. MacCready was willing to bet they’d be waiting at all the major intersections in case Leigh was stupid enough to venture out.

Where was Leigh? He wouldn’t be walking around, not with his injuries. No; he would be holed up somewhere sturdy, somewhere easily defensible and difficult to find, somewhere with no witnesses. The Brotherhood was barking up the wrong tree by looking at settlements. There was no way Leigh would endanger innocent people. It made MacCready sick to think of Leigh hidden somewhere while these settlers lived out their boring lives, unaware or uncaring that the man who’d put all this together for them was hurrying towards his death.

As if you’re any better, he chastised himself, running around in the rain like an idiot. Leigh’s probably warm and dry right now somewhere with a beer and a box of food. MacCready could just picture him, welding tools in hand, whistling to the song on the radio as he worked on his power armor.

Power armor….

He would need parts….

The kind of parts that were scattered throughout the Mechanist’s Lair. Leigh and MacCready had cleaned it out months ago, but Leigh had never sent any settlers there, electing to keep it as a small, private laboratory. It was perfect: the location, the defenses, the hidden entrance. It was the sort of place Leigh would go; it was the place Leigh was. MacCready could feel it, tangible as a rope tugging him towards the south.

The rain was pouring down. MacCready took a final survey of his surroundings, check the suit for flecks of mud,  and disappeared into the foggy forest.

The Brotherhood was everywhere; walking along the roads, blocking the bridges, circling overhead in their vertibirds or thundering  through the mud. The hazy fog of the summer rain refracted the light of their headlamps and turned them into miniature stars. More than once, a pair of headlights came to rest on MacCready, attracted by the flicker of movement, then turned aside. In the rain, he was simply another shape, a ghost made by the wind. The Brotherhood’s net was cast too wide to catch something as small as him.

It was a rush to walk invisibly through the world, totally free, capable of incredible violence without any chance of retaliation. With this suit, he could walk into the Prydwen and put a bullet in Maxson’s forehead; he could walk into the mayor’s office in Diamond City and empty the vaults. He could pick a vantage point and clean out every guard in Diamond City, and then be king of the empty houses. He thought of Leigh, who’d worn this suit before him, who’d used it to walk down the barracks in the night and murder his comrades one by one. With the suit he’d been free– totally free, completely able to leave his life at a spy at any time, and yet he’d chosen to stay.

Leigh was so goddamn stupid, so devoted, and MacCready was going to kick his ass when he found him.

 

It was late afternoon before he reached the Mechanist's lair; Brotherhood patrols and wild animals and mud had all conspired to force him into the most circuitous route possible. He hesitated over the trapdoor that lead down into the Mechanist’s Lair, then yanked upwards. Nothing. All his strength did nothing to move the little door. Any uncertainty that had troubled him before vanished– Leigh had done this. Leigh was the only person in the world who knew about this door other than MacCready, and he’d slunk down into the oil-scented darkness of the Mechanist’s Lair and shut the door behind him.

Fine. MacCready would take the long way.

The first time he’d come to the Mechanist’s Lair, it had been a place of bright lights and colorful robots that lurched and beeped and filled the wide caverns with the sound of their guns. It was silent now. The robots were in tiny shards that crunched and crackled under MacCready’s feet like an alarm. The darkness overhead was crushing. It was as if he’d never left Little Lamplight.

He hurried forward, pushing recklessly downwards past broken machines and brains in jars, gaining speed with each step until he was running, his heart thundering in his chest. The final cavern loomed ahead of him; he stumbled into the center, exhausted, and stopped, heaving for breath. The place where the Mechanist had made her final stand was a strange, high-vaulted cathedral of broken automatons and abandoned machines. The spotlights had been switched off. The walls rose upwards into a darkness so absolute it was impossible to tell where the shadows ended and the ceiling began. A small building was hunkered down against the far wall, thin shafts of light emanating from the gaps in its shutters. Someone had turned the lights on in the Mechanist’s control center. Leigh was here, just as MacCready had always known he would be.

“Leigh,” he shouted, and the cavern tossed his voice back to him in a mad echo. “Leigh!” Nothing. “It’s me, MacCready.” There was no whirl of turrets, no sound of someone priming a gun. MacCready deactivated his stealth suit and into the dim circle of light. One step, then another, the hairs on the back of neck rising, his hand on his rifle.

The dim strains of music reached his ears: the sounds of a woman singing in a language MacCready no longer understood. Leigh’s language, the language of China. MacCready felt a sort of miserable foreboding. He gripped at his rifle and threw open the door to the control center to reveal– nothing. The room was empty. MacCready stumbled forward, disbelieving, and scanned the room frantically.

A half-drunk bottle of nuka-cola was on the table, the outside still covered with bead of moisture. Next to it lay a letter in the familiar copperplate of Leigh’s writing. MacCready picked it up with trembling fingers.

 

“Dear MacCready,

 

If anyone’s reading this letter, it must be you. No one else knows me well enough to find this place. Even my former wife, who was a woman of powerful perception, never knew me so well as you. I never gave her much to work with. But you, you saw through my bullshit, and you loved me anyway. Thank you for that. It was a gift I never thought I’d have.

Before I make you too angry, I have a gift for you: thirty thousand caps, stashed around the Commonwealth. Five thousand of them are here. There’s a map in the desk drawer with the location of the other five stashes. The password is my name. Jin Li.

I love you. I know that’s a heinous thing to say to someone you’re about to abandon, but I’m out of the range of your rifle. I won’t try to convince you of the necessity of what I’m doing, but I do want to say a few things.

First, that Maxson would never have left me alone. The threat to his power is too great. He and I would have fought eventually, when he tried to take over my settlements. Acquiring assets, he calls it. We did it before the war, too, to whole countries. Never again. Maxson is determined to learn the wrong things from history. It wasn’t the weapons that destroyed the world. It was people like him.

Second, that I know you’re not a raider. If you were, you wouldn’t be so eager to go home with me and pick out curtains. Do you remember when we last visited this place? You were so happy with your new rifle, and so suspicious, as if no one had ever given you anything nice before. I wish I could give you everything in the world.

You’re a good person, MacCready.”

 

There was a spot on the letter, as if Leigh had been crying. MacCready felt an answering tear slide down his own face. Furious, he wiped it away and read on.

 

“Third, and this may be a silly hope, but if I do make it out of this, I want to marry you more than I want you to join the Brotherhood. I know you hate them. I understand why. But pretending that politics don’t affect you doesn’t make you safe. I do have this power, and I aim to use it to protect the Commonwealth, and protect you. (Maxson threatened you, by the way. I doubt he anticipated the magnitude of my reaction.)

That being said, darling, I am tired. After this, I want that time at home with you more than anything. I’ve given up so much over the course of my life. My family. My home. My name. My identity. Even if I end up running this whole fucking mess, I want to see you every day of my life, and that’s a promise. Even if the whole world catches on fire again, this is the last sacrifice I have left in me.”

 

Tears were flowing freely down MacCready’s cheek. He had to stop and put the letter down, afraid that the furious tremor in his hands would cause it to rip. The woman on the radio was still droning on and on interminably. He clicked to the next station on the channel. It was a long time before he could make the tears stop enough to read on.

 

“Even my language has been taken from me. I don’t dream in Chinese anymore. But I’d rather give up my life, and every other scrap of being that I have, than watch Maxson destroy the Commonwealth and destroy you the same way the United States destroyed my first family. One way or another, he’s not coming out of this alive.

(I just saw you coming in through the front door, and it knocked the breath out of me. I didn’t think you’d be here so fast. I’m sitting here watching you on the cameras. I think if I see you face to face, I won’t be able to go through with this, so I plan to be gone before you reach me. I was going to write something stupid about “if you still want to marry me”, but from the look on your face, you’ve already made up your mind.)

I love you. I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it. I hope that you’ll be very rich and happy, but more than that, I hope to see you tomorrow night.

 

Faithfully yours,

Jin Leigh.”

 

MacCready set down the paper on the table with trembling hands. His legs were unsteady. He slumped into the chair, hands covering his face, and began to sob breathlessly. Once again, he’d been too late to save the person he loved.

 

It was about six when he gathered himself enough to glance at the clock. Leigh hadn’t bothered scrubbing away most of the dust in the little room, but the marks of his fingers were visible on the glass face of the clock. MacCready wondered how long they would linger after the man himself was gone from the earth. The thought made him shudder. Every nerve in his body rebelled against the idea.

It was late. The fog and rain had robbed MacCready of his sense of time; he realized he hadn’t eaten since the day before. His legs were wobbly with exhaustion. He scanned the room and found Leigh’s stash of food- mutfruit and junk food. The chips had been opened earlier in the day, and the thought of Leigh eating them by himself brought on a fresh round of tears. MacCready felt empty, scrubbed clean of the things he cared about, and yet. There was something in him that refused to give up.

A burst of static made him jump. Leigh had been tinkering with the radio before he’d left; it was still tuned to some channel. MacCready turned up the volume. It was Preston.

“-do not resist the brotherhood if they attempt to enter your settlement. They are not going to hurt you. Our number one priority is staying safe. General, if you’re listening, we’re all rooting for you.”

The message was on repeat. MacCready lit up a cigarette and sat on the steps of the control center, gazing out into the darkness. It would be getting dark outside, as well. Wherever Leigh had gone, there was no chance of finding him in the dark. No one would see him until the next day, at sunrise. MacCready could just picture it now: Leigh in his red armor, Maxson in his silver. The bystanders. The weapons. The sound of the cannon. The blood splatter on Leigh’s face.

There was something glinting, way out in the darkness of the underground chamber. MacCready ambled warily out into the greater darkness of the cutting room floor, his cigarette flaring between his teeth. The glint was a pair of dog tags, laid across a locker. MacCready picked them up. In the dim light, he could just barely make out the letters if he held them up to the lights.

“Paladin Edward Danse,” he read.

A black fury shook his body. That fucker Danse. He hadn’t been able to hide after all. Maxson had found him, and Leigh, dumb, idealistic Leigh, had picked some kind of fight, and now Danse was dead and Leigh was on his way to the chopping block. MacCready kicked the side of the coffin furiously and only succeeded in hurting his foot. Tears of fury were welling in his eyes.

“Dammit, Danse!” he shouted, but no one answered. His voice was lost in the cavern. Danse didn’t care. Danse was dead, and the problems of the living didn’t concern him any longer. Leigh was MacCready’s problem, and one he had no idea how to solve. He slumped down onto Danse’s coffin, his cigarette a dying ember in the great darkness of the underground cavern, and tried to think.

No idea came. It was just him, a single man with a nice gun, up against Leigh and Maxson and the whole grand stupidity of the Brotherhood of Steel. Despair licking at his heels, he stood and began to head wearily back to the Control Center.

A shape in the dark caught his eye: a second locker, buried further back than the first. Unlike Danse’s coffin, which had been sealed with a soldering iron and wrapped in wire, this one was open. At first, MacCready couldn’t make any sense of the shape inside, but it resolved slowly into an empty form. A dark coat and a pair of sunglasses.

MacCready plucked up his courage and reached into the coffin, and came up with an empty courser’s coat. Where had Leigh gotten this? How had it ended up here? It was such a stupid, empty gesture, but MacCready was too exhausted to feel angry. His hand closed blindly on something cold and metal inside the coffin and he lifted it out. A rifle. It was an Institute rifle– a modified one, not the piece of shit that X6 had used. Evidently, Leigh hadn’t been able to find a courser’s pistol. The sight made brought a grim smile to MacCready’s face. X6 wouldn’t have cared for sentimental bullshit. He would have wanted revenge.

MacCready lifted the rifle out. It lay across his lap, smooth and docile and cold, ready for him to pull the trigger. An idea was beginning to tug at him. He resisted it. There was still time left to do the sensible thing. He could cash out with thirty thousand caps and return home to his son. He could ensure that Duncan would never go hungry and unwanted the same way MacCready had.

And yet….

Sixteen years before, he’d stood in a cavern very much like this one and made his decision. He’d decided to rebel. The world was shitty and getting worse every day, but someone had to fix it. Someone had to stand between the tyrants and their throne. He’d stood in that spot for years, protecting the kids of Little Lamplight, but after Lucy’s death he’d lost his nerve. He’d failed her.

He wouldn’t fail again.

“What the hell,” he said. He spit out his cigarette and ground the end beneath his foot, then turned back towards the control center, a small shape within a vast and complicated darkness.

 

The morning of October first, MacCready woke to the sound of sirens. They stabbed through the underground darkness of the Mechanist’s Lair, blaring out their alarm. MacCready rolled out of bed, seized his gun, and was covered and ready to fire within seconds. The alarms went on and on, a wave of noise that rose and fell. The sound was coming from above, through the ground; it was coming from the side, blaring from the radio.

The silence, when it came, was as shocking as the sound. A burst of static came from the radio. MacCready heard a voice begin to speak, up above. Maxson’s voice. He was giving a speech. MacCready sneered at it. He straightened up from behind his cover, scowling, and glanced at the clock. 5AM. Damn that Maxson to hell. MacCready had been up late into the night, discussing plans and tactics with Cait and Piper. He hoped they were ready to play their part.

He flipped a finger at the distant sound of the Brotherhood of Steel’s speakers and glanced around the room. If Maxson was giving a speech, that meant the duel would be starting soon. He wondered whether Leigh would also give a speech.

Probably. MacCready stretched, yawned, and began a sleepy final check of his equipment.

Sniper rifle, check.

Institute rifle, check.

Courser armor, check.

Stealth suit, check.

It was time. MacCready hurried through the secret exit back up into the Commonwealth. Outside, the sound was redoubled. Maxson had set the speakers on the Prydwen to full blast. MacCready was grateful when the speech finally ended.

Piper, Cait and Deacon were lounging around the corner from the Prydwen, Deacon dressed in MacCready’s hat and coat. With any luck, no one in the Brotherhood would be able to tell the difference. Cait spotted the shimmer of MacCready’s suit in the air first; she nudged Piper, and the distraction began. Piper, Cait and Deacon didn’t need to do anything flashy: they just needed to be there and visible, so that MacCready would have a clear path through the gates and a good alibi later. The Brotherhood soldiers spotted the approaching trio and swiveled to face them. So far so good.

“Freedom of the Press!” Piper shouted, brandishing a pencil and paper. MacCready had to give it to her- she had guts. “I’m here to report on the duel for Diamond City.”

Her response was lost in the sound speakers. Across the water, the minutemen were playing something on the Castle Speakers. It was Preston’s voice.  

“This is Preston Garvey, reporting in from the Castle. Before the morning begins, we have a few words from General Jin Leigh.”

There was a moment of silence. MacCready stood, frozen, as Leigh began to speak.

“People of the Commonwealth,” he said. His voice was calm, strong, unafraid. “We are called upon today to decide the fate of democracies.”

MacCready recovered his wits and hurried through the gate. Across the water, Leigh’s speech was playing from the Castle walls. The Brotherhood might have better speakers, but there wasn’t a settlement in the Commonwealth without a radio tuned to Radio Freedom. Leigh’s voice would be heard in every home in the Commonwealth.

“What is democracy?” Leigh said. “It is the idea that every man deserves a vote. It is the idea that every man, woman and child should be free to choose his own fate, and that these choices matter. People of the Commonwealth, today I call upon you to choose freedom, rather than fear.”

MacCready scanned the base, searching for a clear route to the building he needed to reach. The stealth suit didn’t work at close range, and if MacCready was caught the duel would be over before it had begun. Luck was on his side. The base was mostly deserted. MacCready peered around a corner and found that most of the population of the Brotherhood was clustered together in a large building, watching a screen. Of course– they were watching the duel.

“There are those who would insist on their own superiority, those who would encourage us to trade our freedom for security. But I say to you, that freedom is not a thing which can be bartered and sold.” MacCready snorted. It was just the sort of idealistic nonsense that Leigh would spout, but he did make it sound good.

MacCready spotted the building he’d been looking for and hurried over. On the radio, Leigh was getting really worked up: something about a man’s choices, rather than his background, being what really mattered. MacCready tuned it out. His attention was focused on reaching the building he wanted without being detected. Finally, he made it to his destination and snuck inside. The hallways were filled with doors, forcing him to advance slowly, always keeping to dark corners. A long silence had come over the radio, and MacCready wondered whether Leigh’s speech had ended.

“To the Brotherhood of Steel, I give the settlement of Greygarden, and all the robots contained within. To the people of Starlight Drive-In, I renounce any claim I have on your settlement. Choose wisely. To the people of Sanctuary Hills, I renounce any claim I have on your settlement. Choose wisely. To the people of Hangman’s Alley…”

Leigh was giving away his settlements; or, rather, he was giving them back. Maxson had said that the loser’s property would be confiscated by the Brotherhood of Steel, so Leigh was publicly renouncing his things. MacCready smirked. He needed to be sure that Leigh survived long enough for MacCready to hassle him about his newfound poverty....

There! A ladder. MacCready began the final climb to the rood, his arms and legs burning with the effort. It was still dark out. The dawn hadn’t quite begun. Half an hour earlier, and MacCready wouldn’t have been able to see the ladder rungs. He advanced upwards, listening with half an ear to the announcements.

“To my fiancé, Robert Joseph MacCready, I leave my house in Diamond City and my house in Sanctuary Hills, as well all the weapons and assets contained within.”

You bastard, MacCready thought. We’re not out of it yet. He clambered onto the roof, unclipped his sniper rifle from his back, and lined up the sights. Good enough. As long as the combatants didn’t spend their time exclusively on the far left of the Prydwen he would have a clear shot.

“This is Paladin Jin Leigh of the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China, signing off. Ad victoriam.”  
There was silence, and then a muffled cheer in the distance. The Minutemen were shooting fireworks from the Castle. They burst in showers of red and gold and blue. Leigh’s colors, and the colors of America-that-was.

It was time. MacCready unclipped his backpack and hesitated. If he were discovered when he was on the roof, there would be no cover and no way to run. The Brotherhood vertibirds were buzzing almost directly overhead; a single bullet and he’d be dead. But the bastards at the top wouldn’t look down. They never did.

“First mistake,” MacCready said, smiling. It was time. He pulled the courser uniform from his backpack and lay it out on the ground underneath the stealth suit. His hands were steady as he lay down and lined up his scope. The vertibird were clustered around the battleground, filling the air with the hum of their motors.

The scene on top of the Prydwen came into focus. In one corner, Leigh, dressed in his red armor, the gold stars of China splayed brightly across his chest. In the other corner, Maxson, accompanied by an honor guard of Paladins, his armor gray and black. MacCready sneered at it.

“Just take off the helmet, Maxson,” MacCready murmured. “I’ll add some color to your uniform.”

A single flare rose into the air, tumbling wildly into the skies, a piece of shining red in all the cold light of dawn. The duel began.

A great cloud of smoke swallowed the battlefield. It was as if a cloud had descended directly onto the Prydwen. It had to be Leigh’s doing; that bastard Maxson would never have tried anything this strange. MacCready squinted through his scope. A single shape began to resolve in the fog: Maxson, his mini-gun firing blindly into the cloud. Leigh was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing but the soft ripple of smoke drifting across the stage.

The stealth suit, MacCready realized. He’s found a way to make his entire Power Armor vanish. It was a good trick, one MacCready would have appreciated more if it hadn’t reduced his visibility to nothing. He lowered his scope and squinted upwards, watching the match.

A fresh round of smoke bloomed on the stage in black and white, and the sound of an explosion ripped through the air. Leigh’s grenades weren’t all smoke. Maxson hadn’t moved from his starting position, but at this new round of attacks, he hoisted his weapon and waded into the smoke. The fog closed over him, and the match began.

MacCready couldn’t see anything, no matter how much he squinted; Leigh had found a bulletproof way to make sure that no one intervened in the match. The vertibirds were circling, hoping, MacCready thought, to blow away the smoke, but it was useless. The battlefield remained impassable. The sounds of gunfire began: Maxson’s minigun rattling and shaking as it fired, spraying shells across the field, and the roar of Leigh’s shotgun. Explosions rocked the ship, sending pieces of shrapnel spiraling into the air, but it was impossible to know who had been injured.

Silence, and motion and noise, and silence. The smoke was beginning to clear. The mini-gun had sputtered to a stop. A wind rose from the seas, clearing away some of the smoke, and a shape was revealed. Two suits, locked together, hand against hand. Leigh had taken damage. Sparks were rising from the surface of his suit, the camouflage flickering. His ability to hide was gone.

The legs of Maxson’s armor were charred black and broken. He was losing ground to Leigh, step by step, the two of them drawing dangerously close to the edge. MacCready fumbled his scope into place and waited, unsure if it was worth the risk of revealing himself. The two of them were wavering at the edge. A few feet more and both of them would plummet to the ground.

A drop of sweat trickled slowly down MacCready’s forehead and over the groove of his eye socket. Maxson took a step forward, away from the edge. The suits were straining, throwing off sparks, locked forearm to forearm. If Maxson fell, Leigh would go with him. It was the sort of trade Leigh had said he’d be willing to make.

A second flare climbed over the battlefield. The round was over.

MacCready clicked his safety on and tracked Leigh across the battlefield. Blood was thick across his chest and waist when he emerged from the suit. A swarm of soldiers clutching medical supplies immediately descended on him, blocking MacCready’s view. At least those bastards were taking decent care of him.

He wondered whether Leigh was wearing his ring.

The intermission passed like a breath, and soon Leigh and Maxson were advancing to the center. This round would be fought without armor. Maxson’s battle coat framed the back of his head nicely; MacCready lined up his scope, his hands clammy with sweat.

The second round began.

Leigh and Maxson sprang forward. They moved wildly back forth across the roof of the Prydwen, dipping and diving, impossible to keep in MacCready’s scope. A spray of blood flared in MacCready’s lense, but he couldn’t tell who had been injured. Maxson and Leigh slowed. They were circling now, knives held tightly in their hands. Leigh’s back was to MacCready. Maxson was limping. A bead of sweat ran down the curve of MacCready’s brow and into the hollow of his eye. He blinked it away.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered.

Maxson lunged, and he and Leigh went tumbling onto the ground. A knife went skidding across the pavement and rolled off the edge. It fell, a single spot of light in the empty sky, and was gone. Maxson and Leigh had begun to roll dangerously towards the edge.

One way or another, Leigh had written, he’s not making it out of this alive.

“Don’t you fucking dare!” MacCready snapped. One shot. One fucking shot! That was all he needed. Leigh and Maxson came to a sudden, terrifying stop, right at the edge of the long drop. Leigh was flat on his back, and limp. Maxson’s fist rose and then dropped, striking Leigh square in the face. Once, and then again, and again. Finally, MacCready thought. A clear shot.

Maxson’s forehead hovered in the lines of his scope. It was a calm, cloudless morning without a wisp of fog to come between Maxson and MacCready’s bullet. MacCready fired.

Maxson’s head exploded in a burst of red.

Several things happened at once: MacCready fired again, his second shot striking Leigh in the leg. The vertibirds whirled, looking for any signs of the intruder. A burst of machine gun fire tore randomly across the roof a few meters from MacCready’s position. He held still for a silent count of fifteen, his whole body shuddering with the urge to run, then scrambled down the ladder and booked it like a courser was chasing him.

He managed to dodge through the hallways and across the base without being noticed, but when he reached the northern gate, the doors were closed. The base sirens were blaring out the alarm. MacCready ran up the stairs to the post overlooking the gate and threw himself over the side. It was a eight foot drop to the ground; enough to hurt, not enough to kill. The impact stunned him. He stood there a few moments, his legs wobbling beneath him, then took off running.

 Behind him, the base was stirring like a kicked anthill. No one seemed to have spotted him. He reached the entrance to the Mechanist’s Lair and plucked up the breath to give a one-fingered salute to the base, then ducked inside.

He’d done it.

He lingered in the entrance with his back against the wall, heaving for breath, until his heart slowed and his head stopped pounding. He’d never run so fast in his life.

Nick was waiting for him in the Control Center.

“Did you do it?”

“Hell yeah,” MacCready said. “Maxson and his band of thugs will be answering to Leigh now.” Nick had pulled out a chair for him: MacCready slumped into it and gratefully took the Nuka-Cola Nick offered him.

A broadcast came blaring from the radio.

“Attention, all Minutemen. This is Preston Garvey, reporting in from Boston Airport. There’s been an attempted assassination attempt. The General is injured, but appears to be in stable condition.” MacCready grinned. He’d winged that shot. It would look like an Institute assassin had tried to kill Maxson and Leigh, but missed their second shot- how sad! On the broadcast, Preston continued.

“Arthur Maxson, the former leader of the Brotherhood of Steel, has been shot through the head. Institute involvement is suspected. Be on the lookout for synths along the eastern coastline, and stay safe out there, people. This is Preston Garvey, signing off.”

“Good job, kid,” Nick said. He lifted a bottle in a silent toast and they clinked their glasses together. To Leigh, to MacCready, and even to that bastard Danse, and to X6, who could rest in peace. To stepping up, and to doing what needed to be done.

“Ad fucking victoriam,” MacCready said, and drank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -October 1st is National Day in China.  
> -"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."- Benjamin Franklin  
> \- "If you want to see the fate of democracies, look out the window."- Robert House


	19. EPILOGUE // EXTRAS

EPILOGUE 

October 2, 2088

 

Leigh’s medbay was packed when MacCready entered; Piper and Proctor Ingram were on the left, scribbling away at some notes; Curie and a group of doctors were on the right, surrounded by medicine and surgical instruments, and Cait and a hard-faced Paladin were guarding the door. Leigh himself was in the center, raised up on one of the Brotherhood’s strange beds like a king presiding over a court. He took one look at MacCready and ordered everyone all out.

“But Monsieur, you are still injured,” Curie protested. MacCready would never get used to the shock of that small voice emanating from that strange, multi-armed body. Robots.

“I won’t do anything too strenuous to him,” Leigh said, not breaking eye contact with MacCready. “Unless you think I’m going to die in the next fifteen minutes…?”

“Oh no, no, no…” Curie protested.

“Then go take a break. If I get assassinated now, I’ll deserve it. My life, my call.”

The soldiers filtered out, leaving MacCready and Leigh alone in the room. Their eyes met. MacCready slipped the pistol from his gunbelt and let it fall to the ground, then advanced on the bed. Leigh was watching him hungrily; he didn’t protest when MacCready climbed onto him and took a seat in his lap, straddling his legs.

“So,” MacCready said.

“So…?” Leigh said cautiously. His left hand was already splayed possessively over MacCready’s hip. MacCready grinned.

“Just so you know, I’m not gonna call you Elder Jin.” A disbelieving, delighted smile spread over Leigh’s face. His palm crept upwards, to the small of MacCready’s back, pulling him in for a kiss. Leigh tasted like blood, and his skin smelled of gunpowder and smoke, but he was alive.

“You bastard,” MacCready whispered against Leigh’s lips. His hand was in Leigh’s hair. He wanted to grab it and wrench Leigh’s head back until he apologized, but more than that, he wanted to run his fingers through it, to feel the warmth of Leigh’s skin, the proof that he was alive.

“Shouldn’t that be my line?” Leigh whispered. For a moment, MacCready thought Leigh was going to try and kiss him again, but instead his lips brushed the side of MacCready’s face and came to a stop by his ear. Leigh’s next sentence was so soft MacCready almost didn’t hear it.

“After all, you shot me.”

“I gave you the Brotherhood, is what I did,” MacCready whispered. “You’re welcome.” Leigh’s response was to catch MacCready’s hand in his own, then slowly, deliberately, lift it to his lips. He kissed MacCready’s trigger finger.  

“I mean what I said in the letter,” he said quietly.

“You’d better have,” MacCready retorted. “We’re going to get married.”

“Yeah?” Leigh said. It was almost a challenge, but there was such a soft, hopeful look on his face that it was impossible to take any offense at his tone.

“Yeah.” MacCready said. Leigh kissed his hand again, then captured it between his palm and his face.

“And then what?” Leigh asked teasingly. The look and feel of him underneath MacCready in the bed made MacCready’s skin warm and his pulse fast, but he couldn’t give in. Not yet. He sighed.

“And then this, I guess,” he said.

“This?” MacCready gestured to the medbay with his free hand.

“This. I-I talked to Nick. And… I’m willing to give you two years.”

“Two years?” Leigh asked. It was surprisingly difficult to force the words out of his mouth, but MacCready forced himself through it. He’d shot Maxson and given Leigh the Brotherhood, and he was damned if he wasn’t going to get something out of it.

“Two years,” MacCready repeated. “I’m willing to join the Brotherhood for two years. Wear the uniform, so what I’m told, all that jazz. Try to ‘save the Commonwealth.’ And after that’s done, you quit, come home with me. Go out on the open road, just like old times.”

Leigh’s face was terribly soft.

“You really thought about this, huh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” MacCready demanded.

“Nothing.” Leigh said. He hesitated, clearly thinking through MacCready’s offer. “It’s a good idea. A way to put a time limit on things. I can’t do everything myself.” He sighed and leaned his head against MacCready’s chest. They sat like that for a long time, the sound of their breathing swallowed up in the clinks and beeps of the Prydwen. MacCready combed his fingers idly through Leigh’s hair, and Leigh exhaled very softly, his good arm pulling MacCready closer.

“But?” MacCready said softly. The fact that Leigh couldn’t do anything had never once stopped him from trying, and MacCready didn’t believe he was about to start now. Leigh sat up, something terribly sad in his expression.

“Five years?” he said, his voice filled with resignation.

“Aw, come on,” MacCready said. “Are you serious?!”

“Shhh, hear me out. I’ll make you an officer. You won’t have to take any orders you don’t want. We’ll take two days a week off every week, and everyone in the Commonwealth will be afraid of you. And of course, you’ll have me for five years afterwards. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

“If you don’t try to weasel out,” MacCready muttered.

“Would I do that?” Leigh said innocently. MacCready stared at him a moment and then started to laugh.

“Yeah, you would, you fucker, and I want you to know that there’s literally no chance. I’ll shoot you first.”

“I know,” Leigh said. He looked sheepish, and then delighted, as if MacCready offering to shoot him was the best thing he’d heard all month.

“I mean it!”

“I know you mean it,” Leigh said warmly. “It’s one of the things I like about you.”

“I’ll tell them what actually happened in the Institute.” That made Leigh wince and look towards the door; MacCready grinned and lifted an eyebrow. “You forget how much I know about you? Whatever deal we make, I’m not going to let you back out.”

“...four years?”  Leigh’s mismatched eyes were half-lidded, a warm flush spread across his cheeks, his teeth digging lightly into his broad lower lip. The look, the little grin, the dip in Leigh’s eyelids when he glanced downwards- MacCready knew it had to be calculated, but that didn’t do anything to make it less appealing.

You’re a fucker,” MacCready muttered. “Four years.” Leigh leaned in, skimming the tip of his nose against MacCready’s.

“Okay,” Leigh whispered. MacCready could feel his smile against his mouth. “Welcome to the Brotherhood, Commander.” MacCready kissed him then, mouth sliding against open mouth, and bit his bottom lip. When he pulled away, Leigh was looking at him like he’d stolen every cap in the Commonwealth, blind adoration plain on his face.

“Mr. Jin Leigh,” MacCready said, savoring every syllable of Leigh’s name. “Let’s go kick some doors in.”

 

 

FANART

 

[maccready and leigh](http://nomette.tumblr.com/post/146832214589/seasaltpepper-i-drew-fanart-for-shot-through), by seasaltpepper

[confrontation at the rexford](http://soundssimpleright.tumblr.com/post/147254463188/can-the-chit-chat-what-do-you-want-leigh), by soundssimpleright

  
SOUNDTRACK

 

  
[side 1: R.J. MacCready](https://open.spotify.com/user/nometterin/playlist/7KMlh7O3s6TBxpr5b15pSa)

   


[side 2: Jin Leigh](https://open.spotify.com/user/nometterin/playlist/64Bub280b1dKiZ25VsaB26)

 

TUMBLR

[first chapter](http://nomette.tumblr.com/post/135361215644/shot-through-the-head)/ [last chapter](http://nomette.tumblr.com/post/163872007609/shot-through-the-head-final-chapter)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it. This fic was the first time I ever really participated in fandom as a creator of content, and it's been a blast. I met so many cool people through the fallout fandom; before I wrote this, I'd never made a single friend over the internet, and now I talk to people on tumblr almost every day. Thank you so much to everyone who commented and left kudos and posted cool fanart and maccready screenshots. I would have stopped like two chapters in if not for all the encouragement and enthusiasm from the community. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. 
> 
> Special thanks to my beta Limiculous, who improved the quality of these chapters immensely, to soundssimpleright for support and input, to yuunobi, for truly epic comments, and to pelleliu, who put fifty million pictures of MacCready in front of my face. I <3 you all.

**Author's Note:**

> (Leigh is not actually a commie-hater, he is just a lying liar who lies. Bear with him.)
> 
> I'm [Nomette](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/nomette) on tumblr if you want to join me in trash mercenary hell.


End file.
